South Africa's faces of shame
The Sunday Times this weekend listed the names of those guilty of plunging the country into darkness.
It said:
THESE are the people to blame for plunging South Africa into darkness.
President Thabo Mbeki, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin and former Eskom chief executive Thulani Gcabashe and his successor, Jacob Maroga, ignored the signs of impending disaster for 10 years.
Not only did the government refuse to invest in new power stations in 1998, but ministers went into denial whenever they were warned.
The newspaper points out, among other things:
According to the White Paper on the Energy Policy of SA, approved by the Cabinet in 1998, Eskom warned that its surplus capacity would be fully used by 2007. The paper, signed by Penuell Maduna, who was then the Minerals and Energy Minister, advised ensuring that “the electricity needs of the next decade are met”. But Maduna was replaced by Mlambo-Ngcuka — who insisted there was no looming crisis. In 2003 she went as far as saying she had been assured by Gcabashe that South Africa would never run out of power.
Not only that, but Alec Erwin, who just has to be another candidate for South Africa's own Comical Ali, has to shoulder much of the blame.
Shortly after the series of power failures in the Western Cape in 2005, Erwin assured Parliament that there was “no national energy crisis”. In 2006 Erwin blamed “sabotage” for a crisis that hit Cape Town’s Koeberg nuclear power station.
This is the same Erwin who last week said the government was willing to "share" some of the blame!
Of course, the electorate will simply vote the ANC into power again and again and again, even though in any rational country this kind of thing would topple a government.
The Sunday Times article can be read here.
