Are Eskom and the government lying to us?
The answer to the above question, at least according to the investigative team of Carte Blanche, is a resounding yes.
The programme last night showed that rather than the electricity crisis being caused by power-greedy consumers, as the government would have us believe, is in fact the result of incompetence at Eskom.
According to the investigative team (which got hold of several confidential Eskom documents), although Eskom says it has a problem with wet coal, the fact is that wet coal is never a problem for power utilities. The truth appears to be that Eskom is running out of coal. The reason is that it ended its coal supply contracts with former suppliers and gave contracts to inexperienced black economic empowerment companies (one of which was actually an interior decoration firm). Eskom also then priced those companies out of the market.
A Carte Blanche crew in a helicopter filmed two power stations, showing that there was almost no coal stock there. Just empty black fields.
Another problem is that Eskom got rid of its experienced staff. In fact, its staff levels now are half of what they were 15 years ago, and lacking in experience. An internal document leaked to Carte Blanche shows that it became policy not to hire any white males this fiscal year.
What is more, Carte Blanche found out that South Africa was still, despite Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga's statement to the contrary last week, supplying neighbouring countries with electricity. In fact, a new five-year contract was entered into with Botswana for the supply of 350MW of power. This was signed on 8 January, even though South Africa was being plunged into darkness. The leaked information shows that the amount going to neighbouring countries last week was six times the amount being load-shed in South Africa.
An Eskom spokesman, Dr Steve Lennon (he came across like Iraq's Comical Ali during most of the interview), admitted on the show that Eskom was still supplying neighbouring countries.
According to Carte Blanche, it is not so much a problem of higher domestic demand as lower supply. It says: "On the 1 February last year - during the maintenance cycle - Eskom's output was more than 32 000mW. But this Thursday it spiralled to a debilitating low of 27 000mW.
"When you examine this page, the reason becomes obvious. All these units were out of service.
"The total capacity loss was over 9 000mW, enough to power three cities the size of Johannesburg."
The transcript for the first part of the Carte Blanche show (I don't see one for part two) is here.
