Global Citizen

Angry SAs speak: Eskom has taken us back to the dark ages!

Eskom announced that for the next three months, we can expect load shedding every week. As such, the community is up in arms once more.
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Less than two weeks into 2021, South Africa's 'favourite' state-owned entity was back to its old tricks. Eskom announced that for the next three months, South Africans can look forward to a generous bout of load shedding every week.

It's a bitter pill to swallow and the community is tired of dealing with rolling blackouts, especially when they are due to failures in Eskom's maintenance and infrastructure.

The economy is practically at a standstill, with the entire country under lockdown level 3, yet Eskom insists that citizens need to cut back on power usage. All of this while being urged to work from home and children are expected to study online.

An annoyed Tracer ZA writes, "No surprises here. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea replacing all the highly competent staff with highly incompetent staff, hey ANC?"

Read also: A Code Red at the hands of Eskom

The debt-ridden power utility reported a malfunction at one of its new generation plants earlier this month, which meant four straight days of power cuts. Kusile power station, which is already over budget and not yet fully built, broke down after a conveyor belt supplying coal to two units failed.

CentralLimit sums it up as, "Service delivery failure under ANC-led government."

"This is the new power station built at 3x the original price by the corrupt ANC, who can't manage anything and can't deliver any growth let alone alleviate poverty. The ANC just steal from the country," says Sibusiso.

"British scientist Michael Faraday discovered the basic principles of electricity generation, the French gave us the ramjet engine & the Americans built Apollo 11. What did the ANC do with this? Took SA back to the dark ages, bankrupted the airlines & sent the country rocketing into a black hole!" says Fred Perry.

"Start off by reducing the bloated workforce down to levels commensurate with other international power utilities. Reduce the salaries of the surviving employees by 30%. Then outlaw all and any BEE procurement processes. Buy only from the best and cheapest bidders, with no regard whatsoever for racist practices. Do the above, and the debt mountain would suddenly be a lot less onerous," suggests Incitatus.

Gupta's pet says, "Another ANC success story that keeps on telling! And still, the streetlights are on, day and night… Useless bloated cadres." 

Read also: Eskom faces more dark days as profits dwindle

Eskom, which has been facing acute financial issues and continues to operate at a loss, released a statement towards the end of 2020 saying, "In order to improve our financial position in the longer term, we require a considerable reduction in the debt profile or a sizable increase in cash flows through cost-reflective tariffs."

Eskom CEO André de Ruyter also said that the state-owned entity would sell 7,000 of its non-core properties – valued at nearly R10bn – over the next five years in an attempt to address some of its financial instability.

"The power utility's top priority remains to address operational and financial challenges and return to financial sustainability," De Ruyter said. The business will also be turned into three separate units to add outside power producers, and will eventually move away from coal as its main fuel.

The community outlook isn't particularly positive, though.

Debt
Eskom
load shedding
Power Cuts
Kusile power station

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