The city of Johannesburg, South Africa, is to follow the lead of Cape Town and seek alternative power suppliers other than Eskom, the state-run electricity monopoly that has been gutted by overly aggressive affirmative action and mismanagement.
Two decades ago, Eskom provided the world’s cheapest power, and was discussing high-tech investments in new technology such as pebble-bed nuclear reactors. The company was considered a candidate for privatization to boost foreign investment.
But pushback from South Africa’s trade unions led to that plan being shelved. Moreover, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress, found it convenient to use state-owned companies like Eskom to offer jobs to local cronies.
Eskom and other state-owned enterprises also implemented aggressive affirmative action policies that saw white engineers displaced by black replacements who often could not do the job, forcing companies to hire consultants and foreign workers.
Moreover, cities like Johannesburg used (or abused) rising electricity rates as a way to collect higher municipal revenues, which went into local government coffers rather than being reinvested to expand power generation or improve infrastructure.
The result is that South Africans in Africa’s most important economic hub have been forced to deal with power outages for days at a time, damaging economic growth and prompting more of the country’s skilled population, of all races, to leave.
The Daily Maverick reported this week: “Outages that last for days are regular everywhere, from Soweto to Sandton, as one of Africa’s largest cities has lost access to stable and cheap electricity. The budget to be tabled this week has pencilled in an electricity increase of 9.61% (almost double the inflation rate) and 10% each for the next two years.” The power outages are so frequent and so severe that doctors have resorted to using their cell phones as flashlights when examining patients.
Recently, as Breitbart News reported, the City of Cape Town, governed by the opposition Democratic Alliance, announced that it would seek alternative power providers so that the city could guarantee residents that it could keep the lights on.
Now Johannesburg, which has been governed by the opposition since municipal elections in November, has decided to pursue the same path, planning to offer tenders to private power companies as the last alternative to save the city’s future.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new novel, Joubert Park, tells the story of a Jewish family in South Africa at the dawn of the apartheid era. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, recounts the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.