South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of emergency on Thursday due to energy shortages in the country. He did this in a speech during the annual State of the Union, reports Reuters news agency. According to the president, the energy shortages pose a threat to the economy and social life. “The crisis affects every part of society. We must take action to reduce the impact of the crisis on farmers, small businesses, our water infrastructure and our transport network.”
A state of emergency gives the government more powers, for example by allowing emergency tender procedures, with fewer bureaucratic intermediate steps and less supervision. This measure was taken earlier during the corona crisis.
President Ramaphosa says he wants to use the measure to support companies that produce food, for example in obtaining emergency generators. He also promised to appoint a minister who will deal with the energy issue.
Energy shortages are not a new phenomenon in South Africa. The country has been dealing with ‘load shedding’ since 2007. This means that the power is turned off at certain times to relieve the load on the electricity network. But it’s never been as bad as the past few months. In 2023, the power will not have been on for a full 24 hours without interruptions.
Although South Africa is one of the most industrialized countries in Africa, its energy network is very outdated and heavily dependent on coal. But due to poorly maintained mines, state-owned Eskom cannot provide enough electricity for the country’s more than 60 million inhabitants. As a result, they can only cook at certain times, light their home or wash clothes. Refrigerating processed meats is difficult, as is charging phones.
Businesses are also severely affected by the shortages. Factories have to shut down machines for hours every day, hospitals fear that the shortages will cost lives. Due to the power outage, economic growth is expected to remain limited to 0.3 percent this year.
Criminals
Also playing a role in the energy shortages is serious corruption at state energy company Eskom. The huge company, which has a monopoly on electricity production in South Africa, is in fact partly controlled by criminals, the British business newspaper wrote Financial Times earlier this year. For example, good batches of coal are regularly stolen and replaced by bad coal loads. This not only has an impact on the availability of energy, but also causes power stations to fail more quickly. Many power plants and coal mines are located in Mpumalanga province, which follow the FT known for corruption and gang violence.
President Ramaphosa has previously said that he knew Eskom employees who went to the office in bulletproof vests. Last year, the army temporarily stood guard at some power plants to prevent sabotage.
The crisis at the company reached a new low last January when CEO André de Ruyter said that he had been poisoned with cyanide in December. He was just trying to fight corruption in the company. De Ruyter survived. He intends to resign in March after the ruling party ANC regularly blamed him for the major energy problems.
Mountain of debt
Eskom, which has about 40,000 employees, has an annual budget of several billion euros, but in practice spends much more on extra diesel or spare parts for power plants. The company therefore has huge debts. De Ruyter previously told the FT that he knew of examples where spare parts were in the books, but in practice were not present at all at power stations. The company then had to write it off again.
South Africa is one of the most coal-dependent countries in the world: the raw material is responsible for 85 percent of electricity production. On the list of CO2emitters worldwide, it ranks thirteenth.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 11, 2023