How incompetents switched off South Africa's electricity

It is the year 2008, and suddenly there is not enough electricity to power the country. All major business districs and house holds are switched off for two hour blocks at a time, in the form of rolling black-outs throughout the entire country.





This is now starting to happen several times a day.





Business comes to a stand still as computer networks are disrupted...
Traffic grid locks as traffic lights in entire areas stop functioning...





How did this come about ?





Before the advent of democracy (rougly 13 years ago), South Africa had such a major electricity surplus that it mothballed 3 power stations, and still managed to export electricity to neighbouring countries.





So how did South Africa suddenly (and according to the politicians: "Unexpectedly") run out of electricity.





Lets look at the facts:





* In 1998 a goverment whitepaper was presented to parlament predicting that South Africa would run out electricity by 2007 if immediate action is not taken (build more power stations). Nothing was done.





* In 2002 the electricity regulator fined Eskom (the national power utility) for gross negligance for how it is managing the country's electricity supply





* Electricity demand is not difficult to predict. Ten years ago the ANC said it was targeting 5-6% economic growth rate, which was roughly what transpired. Electricity growth CORRELATES near perfectly with GDP growth. Thus any high school kid armed with a calculator can predict future electricity demand.





Therefore there exists no other explanation for this dire situation: Gross Incompetence.





The major changes that occured in the Government and at Eskom in the past 13 years of democracy:





* White politicians from the old order have been replaced by ANC people (almost all non-white)





* Massive sections of Eskom's white management has been replaced by black management in order to comply with governments affirmative action laws.





It does seem enterresting that South Africa always had excess electricity. Then it replaced all the white faces with black faces. Then 10 years later the country runs out of electricity.





What are the effects ?





Two weeks ago the single largest ever foreign direct investment into South Africa was cancelled because there is not enough electricity to support the project (R 22 Billion)





Several platinum projects were also placed on hold.





I predict that South Africa will loose in the region of R 200 billion in foreign investment over the next 5 years as a direct result of this.





Eskom has said that it will take at least 5 years for the problem to be rectified, whilst independant experts place it at 7-10 years.





In one fell swoop irreparable damage has been done to the SA economy.

References

Eskom tells mines to shut down

Electricity shortage a national emergency

WARNED 10 YEARS AGO OF ELECTRICITY CRISIS

Lack of electricity now blackens the economy

Electricity crisis worsens, mines close

http://www.sabcnews.com/features/eskom/

Where does the blame for load-shedding really lie?



-------------- One last happy thought...

Whats the difference between the TITANIC and SOUTH AFRICA ?

?

With the Titanic, the lights were still on, when it sank!

How South Africa chooses to be poor

What creates wealth ?

Taking advantage of opportunities.

Making the most of each. Extracting maximum economic value from every opportunity.

What do we do instead ?

We choose to be 50-60% less efficient than we can be.

How do we do this ?

Imagine an economic value chain 7 levels deep. One business buys a product from another business, who in turn depends on service from another business who in turns ... you get the idea!

Now imagine loosing 10% efficiency at every step....

I've calculated the effect will be that you only realise 47% of the value, with 53% of the value being lost.

This means if we used every opportunity to its full, each person would have been twice as wealthy, earn twice as much money... and half as many people would have been desperately poor.

Instead this is how we throw away our opportunities
- Imagine loosing 10% in productivity due to massive electricy problems
- Imagine loosing 10% in time due to being stuck in traffic jams and lack of public transport
- Imagine a business spending 10% of its inccome on security measures due to our rampant crime
- Imagine the productivity loss due to the Telkom monopoly
- Imagine the loss in productivity due to the fact that many companies are required to hire employees that best fit their BEE (black economic empowerment) objectives rather than the most skilled ones
- Image the loss in productivity due to all the highly skilled people buggering off to Australia, the UK etc.
- Imagine the loss in productivity due to inflexible labour laws (companies cannot hire and fire employees easily, employees regularly strike and demand wage increases far in excess of inflation etc.)

All of these inefficiencies add up.

This is the South African reality. A place that has through active negligence by its leaders ensured that it only operates at 47% efficiency.

If only SA didn't wait until recently before acknowledging the extent of crime...
If only Eskom could have ***somehow*** foreseen the obvious supply problems 10 years ago...
If only South Africa could have realised the price it pays for BEE in terms of inefficiencies and in chasing competent white people out of the country...

All of these things have been blatantly obvious for years, but our leaders refused to act.
The damage has been done and will take 10 years or more to recover from - if we get superstar competent president appointed next.

However the majority (mostly black people) are all voting for Jacob Zuma, the person that has been accused of Fraud, Rape, Corruption and that enjoys singing a song (Translated as "Bring me my machine gun")

Articles in the news:

Zuma makes his final legal stand
ANCYL wants zuma for President
'Zuma will be President'


and then: Totally Bizare ?!??

"President Zuma will sort out White People" was published in the Sunday Standard in Gaborone.

You bastards will stay poor!

(src: http://www.africancrisis.org/ZZZ/ZZZ_News_007285.asp)

Video Clip: Land Reform - Celebrating in Hope - South Africa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuGHKBJV3uA


The great South African Land Scandal:
http://greatsalandscandal.blogspot.com/


There is plenty of solid, hard evidence: The South African government will "buy" productive white owned farms, hand them over to any black person that makes a claim against it (often times with only anecdotal evidence being sufficient)

Then surprise, the new people that have just been handed prime farms (game farms, lodges, maize farms, dairy farms, wine farms etc) run it quickly into the ground.

There should be no surprise. If you just hand people the fruits of someone else's labour, what do YOU think is going to happen ?

The government has set aggressive targets for land reform - it wants to purchase (or obtain otherwise -- no more willing buyer willing seller) 30% of all registered land in South Africa, and redistribute it to black people.

This process has already resulted in nearly halving South Africa's productive food capacity. In fairness this can't be blamed solely on land redistribution policy. I'm sure the outright murdering of a significant proportion of the white farmers also contributed * (see below).

Of course white farmers are hesitant to make large new investments in their land, because at any moment the government can come along and take it away through a pending land claim.

Instead of handing productive farms over, why not give undeveloped land to our upcoming black farmers, and allow the recipients to develop it (through the usual land bank loans - instead of purchasing productive existing farms with that money) ?

Is this not what the white farmers had to do when they just started out 10-20 years ago ? Why should it be any different today for a black farmer just starting out ?

Indeed: You bastards will stay poor!



----
Government Sources:

You can see plenty of good intentions despite the flawed concept that "people who work the land deserve to own the land" (Imagine how hard the average Entrepreneur will laugh at that: You deserve to own anything only when you buy it - that is what the free market system is all about)

http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2005/05072812151001.htm
(Minister of Agriculture)

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/pubs/umrabulo/umrabulo24/landreform.html
(Confidence to push ahead with land reform)

http://land.pwv.gov.za/publications/Land_Summit/Conference_Papers/Land%20Summit%20financing%20-%20World%20bank%20speech.pps
(Powerpoint slides - Financing of Land Reform - looks like a well thought out presentation, but dear reader I'll leave it as a challenge to you to spot the problems)

Farm Murders* (White farmers!)

Genocide Watch Report:
http://www.genocidewatch.org/BoersSlain01.htm

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Farmer_Murders

Farmers Achilles Tendons slashed
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1878534,00.html

The farm murder plague:
http://www.christianaction.org.za/firearmnews/2004-03_Thefarmmurderplague.htm

2010 World Cup: Catalyst or Catastrophy

South Africa has been awarded the hosting of the 2010 World Cup Soccer, by FIFA.

Multi billion rand facilities are well underway as well as major upgrades to the country's public transport infrastructure.

Safety and Security plans have also been defined which includes some very innovative ideas such as

• Foreign nation's visitors will be able to identify police officers from their own country at the event (dressed in the official uniforms of that country, conversant in the languages of that country)
• Spy planes flying overhead, and massive camera monitoring centers and response teams

However, considering that SA is the crime capital of the world, will all of the measures to be implemented really guarantee an acceptible level of risk for our foreign guests ?

Now lets play devils advocate, and examine three seperate doomsday scenarios:

The conspiracy theory guys will love this...

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO 1: FIFA retracts the 2010 from South Africa
Although it has been affirmed that SA will be hosting, there are backup nations on "stand-by" (not officially supported by FIFA) that could take over the hosting should SA not be ready.

Imagine crime does not improve much over the next two years, and lets say that the international community does not buy into our proposed security solutions.

A last minute withdrawel of the 2010 hosting from SA would be catastrophic. We have already sunken billions into the project, and it would be a massive blow to citizen morale.

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO 2: 2010 Becomes a PR disaster
All goes well, and we host the event.
However, despite all the security measures in place, several high profile visitors are raped, murdered and robbed at gun point (common occurances here in SA).

The PR fallout from this could be massive.

The long term damage to SA's reputation would be hard to recover from.

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO 3: 2010 Becomes a financial disaster
Due to the fact the contracts are awared based on race criteria (called economic empowerment or BEE) massive inefficiencies are introduced.

Also we have to spend more on security due to our obnormally high crime situation.

What if, after all the costs are tallied and compared to the financial benifits of 450 000 fans visiting brings to the country, we come out with a BIG MINUS ?

Simply due to inefficiencies and structural problems (security spend) we do not manage to conduct the event at breakeven or better ?

Then SA will be left with a massive debt overhang

Summury
Several things could go wrong with 2010. But will they ?

here is another thinking man's blog on the topic:
http://eyeoncrime.co.za/?q=node/170

a Little affirmative action can't hurt ? Just BEE nice!

As South Africans (especially as white South Africans) we have been told by politicians (mostly black) that we should accept unequal employment practices giving preference to black candidates over white candidates (strangely enough this is called equal opportunity employment!)

Is it our duty as white South Africans to right the wrongs of the past ?
To pay the price so to speak, and to just stand aside and make space for previously disadvantages brothers and sisters ?

And for how long ?

The common answer from these politicians has been: "For as long as it takes".

There is very little indication of How Long they think this will be.
It has already been more than 10 years.

Perhaps we can't expect repair an ill of a generation to be overcome in 10 years, but is the solution to still allocate opportunity based on race ? Should we give preference to black people today because 10 years ago we gave preference to whites?

Isn't this merely reverse discrimination ?

Isn't this simply neo-apartheid whereby white people are now reduced to being second class citizens just as black people were during apartheid ?

I have some good questions, but not enough answers, but I'm sure the bloggers will help me out...

CNN: South Africa tries Affirmative
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9810/08/safrica.affirmative.action/index.html

Here is what others are writing on the topic:

http://www.blogsouthafrica.net/2007/02/02/affirmative-action-in-the-spotlight/

AA not working for anyone: http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/default/display_article.aspx?ArticleId=1518-1522_2149411

Here's to white economic empowerment:
http://finblogs.24.com/ViewBlog.aspx?blogid=14781510-ecc0-48e1-a1a3-0ad6f3e56590
http://finblogs.24.com/ViewComments.aspx?blogid=14781510-ecc0-48e1-a1a3-0ad6f3e56590&mid=db80de32-f788-4a01-b2cf-41992873becd

www.thenakedemperor.co.za

“Affirmative action is couched in fine words – diversity, talent, merit, opportunity, tolerance, development”.

“But when carried out, it is always punitive. In fact, affirmative action must be punitive. It requires the government to target one group for help because of its race or ethnicity. This means it must target all other groups for punishment. This is the logical flipside of affirmative action, but it is widely ignored. And so affirmative action leads to unintended, (but easy predictable consequences. It increases group conflict, as resentment by the punished groups grows and the demands of the beneficiaries increase. It emphasizes group differences, rather than eliminating them. It discourages effort by the beneficiaries, who come to expect special privileges. And it destroys equality before the law”.

- Don Caldwell in his book No more Martyrs Now