Suggestions Box: How to start getting South Africa powered up and running again

19 Jan 2023

South Africa, already one of the world’s most unequal countries, can ill afford the cost of persistent scheduled power outages that scupper small businesses, have an impact even on large corporates, trouble learners and increasingly pose a health risk as water and sewage treatment facilities collapse.

The necessary steps to fix South Africa’s energy crisis — not just Eskom — are not rocket science, but require multidimensional action that is nuanced and responsive. That’s especially important when new money is not available, and whatever is spent must be cut from somewhere, given the domestic economic doldrums.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Eskom reality check: it will NOT get better any time soon, regardless of SA’s WEF sales pitch/PR”

Here are some suggestions.

An SMME grant for alternative energy

It’s to keep the doors open and jobs going — if creating jobs, and reducing poverty and inequality, as the National Development Plan requires by 2030, are really central to South Africa’s future, rather than just politicians’ talk.

The Covid-19 small business support grant put the basics in place; at the time, the official reason for requesting all sorts of documents was to establish a database within the government. And making a similar amount available, say R750-million, could have a real impact.

Such a grant didn’t seem to be on the table. At least not before the Sowetan carried the names of scores of small businesses brought to their knees by the rolling power outages, under the heading: “Mr President, cancelling your Davos trip is one thing. Dealing with the crisis is another. Here’s a reminder of some small businesses crippled by every failed promise to fix Eskom”.

That day, Small Business Development Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams issued a statement on possible energy emergency relief, and pledged that details of the package, including criteria and application methods, would be announced “soon”.

Politicians should give up their taxpayer-funded generators

Move those generators to clinics, hospitals and schools and, yes, also courts, so services can be provided to ordinary people.

It won’t raise energy availability, but it will be an act of social solidarity for everyone from the President, ministers and their deputies, premiers, MECs and others to relinquish the elite benefits that shield them from the up to 12 hours a day without power.

Perhaps all should also start paying for all their rates and services, not just from R5,001 upwards as the ministerial handbook stipulates.

Cut the red tape — and fast

Much can be done in regulation — the domain of Cabinet ministers. As with the removal of licence requirements for private embedded generation after the initial June 2021 raising of the licensing threshold to 100MW. However, further regulatory changes are needed to facilitate wheeling, or how independent producers feed back into the national grid.

Those frameworks exist and are a “scaleable solution”, according to Eskom. But, right now, wheeling is bureaucratic spaghetti, involving paying for a cost estimate letter, a budget quote and then connection fees, security deposits, and getting everyone, including municipalities, to sign off.

Changes to regulations could bring about a more user-friendly and effective system — and at the same time tie in the incentives for corporate and individual rooftop solar systems that the National Energy Crisis Committee, or Necom, is considering, according to a briefing document to this week’s consultations.

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Without wheeling to get those company, shopping mall and private home rooftop solar systems into the national grid, South Africa’s deep inequality between haves and have-nots will worsen.

A cautionary note to Parliament on proposed emergency legislation “to allow energy projects to proceed more quickly and enable coordinated and decisive action”, as fast-tracked lawmaking, often amid political pressure, runs the risk of just producing bad law.

Coordination is the terrain of departments, with ministries the political supervisors. If the ministers stall on implementation, the issue is not legislation, but executive action.

Government, pay your own electricity accounts

Municipalities owed Eskom R44-billion by April 2022, up from R35.3-billion just a year before. And it continues going up.

Government departments are among those owing, as are state-owned enterprises. Denel owes Tshwane some R16.5-million for electricity for at least 120 days and Ekurhuleni R2.25-million, according to a parliamentary reply to DA parliamentarian Tim Brauteseth.

It might not make a huge dent in Eskom’s R400-billion debt — the R31.7-billion government bailout doesn’t even cover the R32.5-billion interest payment, according to the 2021/22 financial year annual report — but it’ll help.

Move Independent Power Producers Office from Mineral Resources and Energy

Much has been said and written about the dysfunction of that department. Independent power projects have been delayed and not enough have been signed off to meet the various bid window stipulations, among other complications that trickled into the public domain. National Treasury, which is supposed to partner with the department, seems to be just MIA.

Stop reinventing the wheel

Even if the government does not want to take up the significant research on energy, electricity and Eskom available in civil society — whether because of ideological leanings, or just plain arrogance — take advantage of statutory bodies like Statistics South Africa and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) which have accumulated vast knowledge.

Insisting on doing departmental research is yet another tactic to delay actually doing. So is yet another meeting with (handpicked) experts or consultants.

And actually, also use Eskom’s facts and figures that are publicly available. The power utility’s alerts on rolling power outage stages are clear about what capacity was lost where, when and why.

Ditch the ideology

That applies whether you are a coal fundamentalist, private sector take-over conspiratorialist, tata ma’chancer or member of WMC.

No, 22,000MW are not idling somewhere unseen and unused — that capacity is broken, it’s gone. It falls under the “unplanned breakages” column in which Eskom is quite candid in explaining why, even if on paper it may have 46,000MW, it actually can only deliver about 25,000MW.

Those updates — they also show the buffer that renewable energy provides against rotational power cuts — are publicly available, so no secret.

All the above is a start. Much more must happen, including a good dose of honesty rather than pretty words, changeable timeframes and blame-shifting — even if elections loom in 2024. DM

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