What a load of shed!

A caller to 702 on Thursday last week said – with conviction – that Eskom is currently supplying around 3000mw per day of power to neighbouring countries. He was quickly followed by somebody from Eskom angrily refuting this, and explaining that they are only providing 960mw per day to an aluminium smelter in Mozambique. “Stopping that will not solve our energy crisis,” he said. That has to be the most insulting and outrageous remark one could hear in such times. When Eskom's website was reporting that our shortfall on that day was around 1400mw, 960mw would have gone a long way toward alleviating the 6 ½ hours of power outage we had in Rivonia. More to the point, why would Eskom be asking me to switch off my geyser to conserve energy if they consider saving 960mw a day to be worthless?

Dinner table discussions (and many hours of standing-outside-waiting-for-power discussions) are now pretty much exclusively given over to this situation. Much of it centres on the ‘real reasons' for our sudden lack. Could it be that we are being duped, people ask? We know that Enron manufactured an energy crisis for the purpose of driving up costs, and we know – because Eskom has told us – that the cost of power will have doubled by the end of this year. Why did the 2003 Eskom annual report glowingly attribute their R10 billion increase in revenue to ‘an increase in demand for power' without saying ‘and by the way, this means we won't be able to supply it in four years time'? Why did their 2007 annual report describe their R6 billion profit as being the result of ‘high growth in sales volumes' and operating costs that were ‘well contained', without making mention of the fact that it is somewhat irresponsible to applaud your abilities to sell more of what you are telling people you can't supply?

Between Eskom and the government, people are guilty of something here. It may not be the criminality that dinner tables and water coolers are suggesting. But if not, then it sure must be gross incompetence at the least. Perhaps even negligence. Yvonne Johnstone and her team at Brand South Africa must be weeping in dismay that a brand that has been so carefully nurtured and protected to become a world great is being so carelessly wrecked by those whom, it appears, have more interest in furthering their political status and personal financial positions than in providing the sustainable governance this brand needs to survive.

As Justice Malala so eloquently reported in The Times this week, Dele Olojede wrote of his native Nigeria that ‘Individuals arrange for their own security, their own electricity, their own water; every home is like a private local government.' When that was written in 2005 South Africans would have identified with all except perhaps the water component, but seeing the country in the same context as Nigeria was far from what we felt. In the space of a few short months the direct comparisons have become frighteningly close.

So whilst radio programmes interview economists on the likely short, medium and long-term impacts of this madness, I sat in a crowded printer's workshop on Saturday morning, waiting in a queue to get a client job printed that Eskom had prevented me from processing during the week. Jetline Rivonia had installed a generator on Friday in an attempt to rescue their suddenly suffering business, and word had spread fast. I chatted to the tearful owner of a well-known food outlet in Sandton City's food court, who could show me the number of days to bankruptcy on her hands. She has a generator, but not only does the centre empty out when the power goes off, but the extractor fans are not connected to the centre's generator, resulting in a smoke-filled food court. “Five days of consecutive lack of trade for a cash-over-the-counter business like ours is too much,” she told me. The managing director of a top engineering firm was there having prints of a document made to take to Malawi the following morning. “This contract is worth R22 million,” he said. “We haven't had power long enough to print these in the office all week.”

Then we went to lunch at the Baron in Woodmead, and groaned mournfully in chorus with the other patrons when the darkness hit. Only to be followed three seconds later by a cheer when the generator kicked in. After lunch we observed South Africa's new brand differentiator – at the bottom of the till slip was printed, “WE ARE GENERATOR DRIVEN”. We put in our order for the office generator – at a cost of more than R100 000 – on Monday, and agreed between us that in the immediate future generator power will be as much a hygiene factor for all SA brands as trustworthiness is for banks.