How world sees SA: Eskom corruption, chaos gets global spotlight

In this powerful half hour movie, our parters at the Financial Times of London explain how corruption and crime turned off South Africa's lights. The FT says "South Africa's state power company Eskom is battling a legacy of neglect, mismanagement and state capture as it struggles to bring an end to rolling blackouts that have severely damaged businesses and the economy.".Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Eskom: how corruption and crime turned the lights off in South Africa | FT Film.Watch the FT Film below.An edited transcript of Eskom: how corruption and crime turned the lights off in South Africa | FT Film.___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Radio Host Let's start with the electricity crisis. 15 years into it, we are still here. I mean, the damage that loadshedding has brought to this economy has been incalculable. .Car Guard There's no electricity. The robot is not working. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor For years, the state electricity provider Eskom has struggled with mismanagement, with inefficiency, corruption. .Andre de Ruyter Eskom was at the mercy of some very large organised crime cartels. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist In the case of de Ruyter, he had been drinking coffee laced with cyanide. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa Some of the most daring acts of corruption have been uncovered and the people are being pursued..Security Guard Loadshedding as a whole has come to an end whenever that's going to happen. We've got no idea. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Eskom is the economic engine of South Africa. It provides today 80% of all of the power that South Africa uses. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor And as the ageing coal fired power stations get yet older and yet more inefficient. Break down yet more often. It's really struggling to keep the lights on. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent There is a lack of capacity, but there is a lack of is capacity that is being managed properly. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor So for many years now, South Africa has been suffering from something that they call here loadshedding, really planned power cuts. These can be 2 hours a day. They can be 6 hours a day. They can even be 12 hours a day. This is when whole parts of the country are blacked out. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Load shedding is stealing time. It is stealing opportunity from Africa's most industrialised economy. It is cutting off electricity to customers who are paying for it in order to prevent a total collapse of the grid. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist The impact of load shedding on day to day life in South Africa is enormous, and that could be anything from traffic lights not working. You go to the shops and the card machines don't work. You can't make phone calls. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Advanced smelters, datacenters, mines: they are all affected. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist The South African Reserve Bank cuts GDP growth this year by two percentage points to 0.3%. It's said that loadshedding would have a half a percentage point increase on inflation because businesses have to pass on the costs to consumers. These things add up day after day and it really does have quite an impressive psychological impact as well. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor Ultimately, Eskom is run by the government and ultimately the government is the ANC. It's run the country for 30 years. If Eskom is failing, then in the people's minds the ANC is also failing. .Zanele Magoro: Co-owner River Park Cafe We're actually preparing the sheep tripe called Mogudu. One of our famous dishes. You know, the struggles that we experiencing in South Africa, which is loadshedding, you understand? That will be one of the topics when people just sitting there we talk about and how the country is being run. We stock every day when it comes to meat because we don't want to keep meat in the fridge in case Eskom decides to switch off the grid and then it becomes a problem and then it's always stage and meat is expensive. So this is the point of sale, right? So when the electricity goes off we can't use the system at all. I'm taking a photo and video to post on Instagram so that people can get hungry and come and buy. I mean, when my battery is on 5%, I can't charge, you understand? Also, the coffee machine, it won't work. Also, we cannot even use the microwave just to warm the food so it becomes a bit of a struggle. You know, there's no music just to entertain people. So it affects us in so many ways..Calib Cassim: Acting Eskom CEO But we just have to keep focussed because we know how critical Eskom is to the economy. Priority number one is to continue on the recovery of generation and reducing that intensity of the load shedding. It builds confidence to the Eskom team and the generation staff. But more important, the positivity and confidence it gives to the economy and to the citizens of the country. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa We're working very hard. We are burning the diesel. The team is having sleepless nights to make sure that we improve the energy availability… We have to eradicate loadshedding. And the only way of doing that is to ensure that Generation exceeds demand. To ensure that, we improve the performance of the existing fleet, which is ageing. But secondly, to introduce new generating capacity largely from renewable sources of energy. .Calib Cassim: Acting Eskom CEO These are realities. There are only 24 hours in the day. You're dealing with load shedding, you are dealing with the debt relief, you're dealing with unbundling, stability of leadership, directions, instructions from various ministers. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Eskom is as old as modern South Africa. It was effectively created in 1923 and designed to foster South Africa's industrialisation: mines, steelmaking… .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Before 1994, Eskom had been providing electricity to 98% of white people, but only 20% of black households were connected to the grid. Eskom and the ANC did a remarkable job and they did hook up something like 1.75 million houses in less than five years. .Zanele Magoro: Co-owner River Park Cafe When Mandela was released from prison, people were so happy. We had that thing that South Africa has a bright future. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent So into the 1980s, as democracy took hold, Eskom was still producing some of the world's cheapest electricity. But in this very monopolistic system, problems were emerging… .Monica Mark: FT Journalist As far back as 1998. A white paper had said Eskom was going to reach generation capacity by 2007, which it did. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor There were other spending priorities. There were huge social inequalities in South Africa that needed to be addressed, and pouring money into old power stations did not really seem the top priority. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent From 1988, the ANC considered but also procrastinated over making Eskom and South Africa's energy supply more competitive. At the same time, there was a countervailing force within the ANC, which looked at state companies as Eskom, as primary drivers of the economy and also the engines to create transformation, to increase black ownership. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor So by the mid 2000s the government had come to the conclusion that yes, it did need new generation and so it decided to build two massive new power stations Medupi and Kusile. But from the outset, these contracts were hit by delays, overspend, corruption, and to this day, neither of those power stations has ever worked properly. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Because of the ANC's socialist heritage. They were very strongly opposed to the idea that something as important as electricity should be farmed out to the private sector, which was one of the ways that electricity generation capacity could have been improved. And then you have the wreckage of the Zuma years where the ANC became a sort of cash cow for corrupt politicians and allied businessmen who connected to them. .Jacob Zuma I have been vilified. Alleged to be the king of corrupt people. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor The Zondo Commission was an inquiry into something that became known in South Africa as State Capture. State institutions like Eskom were hollowed out. So in Eskom's case, somebody very close to Zuma was brought in to run the company and contracts were parcelled out to friends, colleagues, to people perhaps who had paid money to the ANC. And of course that all impacted on the efficiency of Eskom, added to its debt and worsened the gathering power crisis. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist The corruption was very much at the heads, but obviously what they head does filters down. What the Zondo inquiry showed was that the rot was pretty much at every level. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Maintenance at Eskom was neglected. Management turmoil at Eskom was increasing. And Eskom was also becoming extremely resistant to an initial boom in renewable energy outside its control. It's a bit like having heart problems. You have the build up in the arteries a long time before you have a heart attack. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor André de Ruyter was brought in from the private sector to clean the mess up. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Andre de Ruyter's time at Eskom is, in a way, a cautionary tale about the competing strands of the energy crisis. He was appointed by the ANC to fix the rolling blackouts at their most intense, but also to lead the structural change from a monopoly, to separation, to restructuring, to eventually a much more open market. .Andre de Ruyter For me, taking on the job of Eskom chief executive was an opportunity to make a contribution to the country. Either I had to turn it down and forfeit my right to complain about South Africa forever, or roll my sleeves up and get stuck in and try to be a part of the solution. I was taken aback when I saw some really appalling housekeeping at a plant that was supposed to be the flagship of Eskom. This entire place was was covered in fine coal dust. Wires were hanging loose. There were pieces of equipment that had clearly been operated until the point of breaking down and then just been abandoned. So the entire impression was one of neglect. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor When de Ruyter joined Eskom, a friend told him that he had just joined the biggest criminal syndicate in South Africa. He said, Oh, come on. Now when I saw him several years later, he said, Well, perhaps the guy was right. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Eskom is a mega company, so it has a mega footprint, it has mega-budget. There were lots of ways to get sort of your tentacles in that pot of money. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent If you consider anything that Eskom might need to run a power plant, that can be very easily overpriced, and so people on the inside can help those on the outside. .Andre de Ruyter And in one very spectacular instance I went into to a plant and I was shown some kneepads. We were paying R80,000 for one, so a pair would be double that, and we managed to effect an arrest. Within 12 hours, the individual was released on the instruction of a very senior police official who said that there was insufficient evidence. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor Another favourite ruse was to deliver coal that had already been discarded as unusable. Steal the good coal and sell that abroad for a profit. The bad coal was then fed into the mills at Eskom power stations. They would often grind to a halt and needed to be fixed. Guess by who? By some of these very same companies that were in a sense in cahoots with people inside Eskom. .Andre de Ruyter So this plant, Tutuka, once had been one of the top plants in Eskom. When I first visited I was taken aback at the state of the plant. It was clear that something was terribly wrong. So we appointed a person from the outside, a very brave man called Sello Mametja. And Sello went about dismantling the cartels that were operating into Tutuka. But then the death threats started and he had to walk around on the plant with his bullet-proof vest. Tutuka was consuming about half of all the fuel oil that Eskom burnt. Sello followed one of these trucks and figured out that the truck was not offloading, but he was just round tripping over the weighbridge and generating an invoice every time that there was a round trip, obviously with collusion from the weighbridge operator, the security guard and so forth. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent The other issue, and this was the legacy of state capture, is that the police, the prosecutors and other key institutions were also severely weakened. That put De Ruyter and his management team in a very precarious position, because in order to tackle corruption, they would need to use private investigators. .Andre de Ruyter It didn't take long for the investigators to uncover bombshell information. They identified no fewer than four criminal cartels exploiting Eskom. My estimate was that at least a billion rand a month was being stolen from Eskom and I think that's a reasonably conservative estimate. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa So corruption has had a debilitating effect on Eskom, but I really want to emphasise that the critical mass of men and women at Eskom are committed to the resolution of this problem. And I make the point when I engage with them, that the best way of redeeming ourselves is to ensure that we resolve the loadshedding problem and we out those are responsible for acts of corruption. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist People trying to run a small business can't protect themselves from load shedding in the way that bigger businesses can. So loadshedding deepens inequality as well. .Ashely Moss: Hairdresser in Alexandra Township I can't work without electricity. Without electricity I'm just damned. The only thing that can help me is a generator but it's a small business. I don't afford a generator. I can't say I'm proud that I'm South-African because there's nothing that I'm getting from my government, you see, because there's a lot of struggle. There's crime, there's drugs. I have four kids. They can't live here. Alex is too dangerous. It's too toxic for a child to grow up in. I took them to the rural areas. The crime increases after the load-shedding crisis. [Showing his home] I watch TV this side, and then this is the toilet and the bathroom. All the friends that I grew up with, we were like, maybe ten. Now it's just the four of us. The six? Gone. Two in jail, two they're smoking this drug they call it Nyaope, and two, dead. If you have nothing to eat, obviously you don't have an option but to turn to crime. There's no jobs already, plus the load-shedding. [Showing tattoos] An old microphone with stars and birds and a rose. .Interviewer So what does that symbolise? .Ashely Moss: Hairdresser in Alexandra Township Eish? Freedom. I want freedom, I want power. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist If you look at the reality facing millions of South Africans today, there is a huge underclass who are unemployed and who cannot access, not only jobs, but the education and the skills that they want to access. Inequality is so high. It's not in such stark racial lines anymore because a lot of energy was put into creating a black billionaire class. But it's still among the highest in the world. And this is an enormous risk to South Africa's economic prospects and to its social stability. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor When the lights go out, crime goes up. That could be petty crime, theft, bank robberies. It could be stealing cable and making power cuts worse next time around. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist One of the very unusual features of South Africa is that alongside the police, especially in affluent areas, there are private security companies. .Cobus Botes: Area Manager – Beagle Watch Armed Response We are in the alarm industry in South Africa, looking after residential and commercial properties. [On patrol] The kind of area we're driving towards now is a commercial areas: lots of warehouses, factories and all that. But there is quite a lot of criminal activity. Cable theft. Copper theft. There is no electricity, so it suits them because there's no risk to them of getting shocked or electrocuted. [Inspecting substation] One substation like this could carry electricity to look after about 600 properties. But as this one gets vandalised, a whole area goes out. All those cables are disconnected. The copper there, that's been removed already. Often feels like you're fighting a losing battle because you've got this box to protect. But it's another 1400 in one area that you have to look after. [Kievit walks past] This is actually a kievit, if you're lucky enough to have one of them in your surroundings and you do hear them getting noisy at night, then you must know there's something happening. Like outside the alarm system that you're paying for. .Cobus Botes: Area Manager – Beagle Watch Armed Response So another effect of load shedding, your gate motor starts malfunctioning because the batteries goes and a lot of guys don't close. [Inspecting outside building] And as you can see, there's a vehicle, there's a generator at the back, there's a little minibus: that will be stolen in an eye wink. [On patrol] So I'm going to start heading into the residential area, where there's also loadshedding, and see what's happening on that side. A petty criminal, he will jump your wall, he will steal your washing, he will steal your lawnmower, he will steal a leaf blower, he will steal a bicycle. We were forced to start looking at protecting solar panels as well. Solar panels obviously goes onto your roof. So now there is a market for that. There's actually syndicates targeting those houses. They will come pretend to be subcontractors, pretend to be installers. If you find anybody in this industry that says he's doing this for salary, No, he's not. It's a passion and you want to be out the looking after people, reaching out to people and just make it easier for them at the end of the day. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor The government is the sole shareholder of Eskom. It appoints the board, it appoints the CEO. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent There has been continued political interference in the board and management of Eskom. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Certain ministers were sort of bypassing the board and making unilateral decisions, sort of opening the door to dysfunction. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor So the board too has come and gone. There have been accusations of corruption, Incompetence. .Gwede Mantashe So Eskom, by not attending to loadshedding, is actively agitating for the overthrow of the state. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent So even before he resigns, de Ruyter had been accused of treason by South Africa's energy minister. This simply underlined how toxic political interference in the management of Eskom had become. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor They didn't like him calling the company a crime syndicate, nor did they like his emphasis on moving away from coal to renewable power. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Eskom had a revolving door of CEOs. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor I know for a fact that many people have been offered the job as CEO of Eskom and have laughed. It's not particularly well paid, if you can't keep the lights on you're hated, and your prospects of keeping the lights on are minimal. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa I mean when we are facing a crisis of this nature, you need leadership, stability and certainty. And I think it's regrettable that it took us over a year for us to find a replacement of a CEO at Eskom. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Anyone taking this job knows it's going to be a pressure cooker, you could say a poisoned chalice. In the case of de Ruyter, it actually did end up being literally being that. .Andre de Ruyter When I got to the office, the coffee machine had apparently broken and some people were servicing this machine. I then eventually got served a cup of coffee that looked a bit off, the froth on top of the cappuccino wasn't quite as nice as it usually was. But apart from that I noticed nothing strange. But then after about 20 minutes, I was sitting with a colleague of mine, I became very confused. I was feeling very nauseous. I was sweating. My security detail rushed me off to the clinic where the doctor examined me, did all the usual checks. Then I asked the doctor to run a tox screen. It turned out that the cyanide levels in my blood were elevated, so I guess it was a very close shave. And some people were quite serious about getting rid of me and I'm happy to be here today. .eNCA Interviewer Is Eskom a feeding trough, if you like, for the ANC?.Andre de Ruyter I would say the evidence suggests that it is. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent De Ruyter had already resigned when he effectively accused the ANC of feeding at the trough of Eskom corruption. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor The ANC, in turn, blamed de Ruyter. They said his job was to keep the lights on and he had failed to do so. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa Those allegations. Their veracity must be tested before a court of law without dismissing the special investigating unit that has been in contact with the former CEO to substantiate so that they get to build a case, if any, and go after the individuals who are found to be in the wrong. .Calib Cassim: Acting Eskom CEO I am proud to work for Eskom. No other job in this country impacts the entire 60 million people. With that comes the pressure… .Cyril Ramaphosa Fix the problem today, to keep the lights on tomorrow and for generations to come. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent The most important development under Ramaphosa's presidency has been the recognition that Eskom can no longer dominate South Africa's energy supply. So Eskom itself is being separated into generation and transmission to allow more effective investment and management of the power grid. Eskom's debts have also been dealt with. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist I think it's fair to say that Eskom holds the fortunes of South Africa in its hands because Eskom today is over R400 billion in debt and half of that is backed by the government. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent And ultimately he has allowed another boom in renewable energy, this time from private investment, by removing red tape and regulations that was holding this back. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor There were very strict limits as to how much power a private company could produce and what it could do with it. .Crispian Olver: Executive Director – Presidential Climate Commission The cap on embedded generation was initially lifted up to 100 megawatts and then it was abandoned completely. In theory now, a private company can generate power at whatever scale it wants to and provided it can get it wheeled through the grid, which needs Eskom's permission, it can send that power to wherever it wants it consumed in the country. So almost at the stroke of a pen, we've started to make it a more open, competitive and decentralised market. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa We have seen an avalanche of private sector projects as a result of the reforms that have been introduced. On the generation side. .Andre de Ruyter The fact is that renewable energy technology is now cheaper and faster to deploy than conventional energy. And in particular, when it comes to the environmental impact of coal, it is clear that the choice has to be to move to cleaner, greener sources of electricity generation as quickly as possible. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Developed countries have begun offering countries such as South Africa billions of dollars of packages of concessional loans, grants to decommission coal power stations and speed up the roll out of renewables. .Crispian Olver: Executive Director – Presidential Climate Commission So there are sectors which are clearly going to decline. There are sectors and value chains like renewable energy batteries, electric vehicles. These are sectors that are going to boom. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent The trade off of this boom in private investment in renewables is that it risks advancing the death spiral of Eskom by cutting off revenues. South Africa has some of the world's best solar and wind resources. The issue is incentives. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor It would mean shutting down coal mines. It would mean putting coal truckers out of work. A lot of those businesses are black owned. Coal has been one of the most successful businesses in terms of the transition to black ownership. .Crispian Olver: Executive Director – Presidential Climate Commission The idea of a just transition is to make sure that we manage those social impacts in as planned and responsible a way as possible. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist The thing to remember is that load shedding is not the crisis itself, and the crisis at its roots is political. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent The anti-apartheid struggle was fought in the mines. Ramaphosa was a mining union leader. That is the hinterland of many senior ANC politicians. And as the ANC's overall national majority comes into question, particularly in the elections next year, it needs that support. .Crispian Olver: Executive Director – Presidential Climate Commission What are the social impacts of not transitioning? The cost is too high. We are going to be permanently shut out of the global trading system and we're going to lose a lot of our export markets. .Pravin Gordhan If the Developed world is interested in encouraging renewables to be a major source of energy within the African continent, it should rather be providing incentives and it should be working with African countries by sharing technology and making sure that Africa can catch up with the rest of the world. .David Pilling: FT Africa Editor Eskom now is effectively broke. It needs to invest primarily in transmission lines because the new power will come from the sun and the wind in different parts of the country where the transmission network is not yet fully developed. So they need billions and billions of new investment to go into that. Unfortunately, they don't have it. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa Our own computation suggests that we need 20 to 25 billion USD for us to strengthen and expand the grid by about 14,000 kilometres in the next ten years. .Crispian Olver: Executive Director – Presidential Climate Commission We don't have sufficient generation capacity to meet demand and the Government has taken a decision to delay decommissioning by a couple of years. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa If we are to follow the timelines for the decommissioning of these power stations between now and 2028, we'd have removed 9000 megawatts, we are short of about 3000 to 4000 megawatts, so essentially the deficit will be 11,000 megawatts. .Calib Cassim: Acting Eskom CEO I think the bottom line is this: if we can't stop load shedding in two years, extending the life of the plant by ten years doesn't help because it's doing more damage to the environment. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist Eskom provides something like 80% of power to South Africa. That number is dipping in part because people are so frustrated with load shedding that they are trying to get themselves off the grid. .Sanjeev Raghubir: Group Sustainability Manager – Shoprite Shoprite is the largest retailer in Africa. Its ambition is to be the most affordable and accessible retailer in Africa. We use around 5.5% of renewable electricity, and that's from the solar PV panels that we have, as well as some of our landlords. Then there's diesel as well. Diesel at the moment probably represents between 15 and 20% of the electricity that we use. So the group has more than 1800 generators and those generators really support the stores to be able to function during times of loadshedding. [Showing genrator] So it's automatically synchronised with the mains so that it detects that the supply has stopped. There's a slight lag about a minute before then the generator starts and we're able to have electricity in the store. I think when it comes to renewable electricity, I think the private sector is leading the way for multiple reasons. The first one to decarbonise their operations, secondly to be resilient against load shedding, and thirdly, to pay a lower price for electricity. The Shoprite group uses power purchase agreements with its suppliers to install solar PV systems on our roofs, and we buy electricity directly from the suppliers. So the regulatory environment at the moment is not conducive enough to support the weaning of renewable electricity. Our concern is always that the pace of change and the pace of introducing these new regulations takes a long time. Granted, there's a lot of additional aspects and factors to take into account, because what weaning would mean is that the income that municipalities earn may be compromised because you have bigger business buying electricity from other sources. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent South Africa already has some of the lowest emission standards in the world. The issue is that as these coal power stations can't be managed, Eskom needs to fill the gap by allowing higher emissions. That involves a terrible trade off in terms of air quality. .Promise Mabilo: Coordinator – Vukani Environemntal Movement While we are in this area, we are breathing toxic air each and every day. The sad part is that we are bringing up a sick generation suffering from these illnesses. Hardship when breathing, unable to go full time at school. They are getting old in a very young age. My son, who is now 29 years old, I have seen him suffering a lot [wipes away tears]..John Mthembu: Vukani Environmental Movement Now, we are at Kusile power station, one of the biggest power stations in South Africa. Air does not have any boundaries, you know, so everything that they do here, we do bear the burdens. .Promise Mabilo: Coordinator – Vukani Environemntal Movement Now, for me, politics is around selfishness, greediness. We were having a lot of hope, but when time goes… [wags her finger frustratedly] Da da da da da da da da da da da. .Monica Mark: FT Journalist I think you could use the fact that traffic lights are off and things aren't functioning properly as a metaphor for who's at the driving seat in South Africa. It does sometimes feel like there's no one at the steering wheel. .Sanjeev Raghubir: Group Sustainability Manager – Shoprite Loadshedding remains as an existential threat to South Africa. The sooner the government gets on top of this, the sooner Eskom gets on top of this, the better for the economy, the better for us to be able to create jobs. .Andre de Ruyter Where sun and wind are different to coal is that you can't steal sun and wind, and that is why there is significant resistance to transitioning away from the coal supply chain. .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent This election is crucial. Yes, it's very likely that the ANC will emerge as the biggest party, but it's also perfectly plausible that it will lose its absolute majority, that it will not be able to govern alone. .Kgosientsho Ramokgopa Well, it's for posterity to judge whether our efforts collectively have been effective. And I say the best measure of that is how many hours of the day are your lights on? .Joseph Cotterill: FT Southern Africa Correspondent Is there light in the dark? Yes, I think so. The reforms that have been led by Ramaphosa to unleash private investment will pay off in the next 2 to 3 years, but that may come too late for the ANC itself. South African voters are furious..Read also:.🔒 Premium from the FT – How world sees SA: A fire in Joburg symbolises entire system up in flamesHow world sees us: Africa's contagious coups – continent's democrats must act as a bulwarkHow world sees us: Only thing keeping SA from total chaos is its private sector

How world sees SA: Eskom corruption, chaos gets global spotlight

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