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Lights are being switched off in South AfricaJENNI RUSSELLPresident Cyril Ramaphosa wants to clean up the country, but he has a fragile hold on his party. Picture: AFP- 12:00AM January 17, 2020
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I have always returned from South Africa aghast, anxious but ultimately hopeful. It surely can’t become too corrupt or inefficient, I think. The triple forces of capitalism, democracy and a free press will prevent it. Rotten politicians can be replaced; crooked state employees and the individuals paying them off can be exposed. Too many people and profitable businesses have an interest in keeping the state functioning, the trains running and the lights on for it to fall apart.
This year, as in the last, the lights literally are being switched off, and I’ve lost that confidence. For the first time I fear the country may be sliding towards irreversible decay. Corruption has siphoned so much money from the state and twisted so many people’s motivations that it has gone from being a private, hidden tax on the public to a burden that threatens everyone’s daily lives.
It may have been the fifth power cut in five days that tipped me over the edge. Both the President and the national power company had assured South Africans last month that there would be continuous electricity until mid-January. It was, it turned out, a baseless assertion.
At 1am, by the light of an iPhone, I was stumbling around a pitch-black house hunting for a candle to put in the bedroom of a visiting 87-year-old. She had already fallen once that day, on her fragile legs; what was the risk when she woke in an unfamiliar, darkened room? I asked my mother for torches but the cheap Chinese ones, all that had been left in the local shop after Christmas, flickered and died within 15 minutes.
It was just the restarting of rolling, daily, countrywide blackouts, which last officially two to four hours at a time, once or twice a day. In some areas they last much longer, for hours or days, as local substations collapse under the strain of being switched on and off so frequently. Fridges and lights blow, food spoils, restaurants without their own generators can’t serve customers, every business and individual using a computer is paralysed, robberies and break-ins soar in the enforced darkness.
This is not an unfortunate accident. South Africa’s power supply has been crippled over the past decade by the shameless looting of Eskom, the state power company, by corrupt African National Congress politicians, state executives and businessmen.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of public money intended for maintenance, new power lines and power stations have been stolen, diverted into fake contracts, bribes and private bank accounts.
For 10 years the state has known a growing economy and population would need a greatly increased power supply. For 10 years, under the scandal-ridden president Jacob Zuma, it ignored the fact Eskom was being shredded. Nobody with the political power to do anything about it cared, not while there were private fortunes to be made by ignoring it or joining in.
Eskom’s evisceration now threatens the entire economy. It cannot keep up with demand. Consumers are being warned that the rolling blackouts may last for five years and could rise to eight hours a day. Investors in the country are spooked. So much has been stolen or badly spent that Eskom is more than $38bn in debt, which it cannot service; the government has to bail it out as the debt amounts to 5 per cent of GDP.
If the electricity company were an isolated case this would be bad enough. It is only the worst. Corruption has brought South African Airways to the verge of bankruptcy; the limping state rail freight company reports it has lost hundreds of millions to bribes and fraud; a bank in which many poor South Africans had invested their savings collapsed in 2018 after being looted of about $200m by 50 individuals. Provinces, schools, hospitals; no sector is immune.
The President, Cyril Ramaphosa, elected two years ago as a reforming, modernising leader, has established a public commission into corruption that is exposing staggering venality throughout the system, from kickbacks to the buying off of police and prosecutors. The revelations have stunned and depressed a nation that had no idea how deep the rot went.
Last spring the campaigning online newspaper Daily Maverick estimated that the total cost of the corruption of the past decade to South Africans was about one-third of GDP. In a country where unemployment is 29 per cent and growth 1 per cent, that’s a lethal burden.
The question is whether, once fraud and private enrichment are so entrenched, anything can uproot them. The obvious deterrent — punishment — has been scarcely evident so far, though lawyers tell me that behind the scenes some huge prosecutions are being carefully constructed by new, untarnished appointees.
Expect change, they say.
The biggest problem is that Ramaphosa, who undoubtedly wants to clean up the country, has a fragile hold on his party. So many of the ANC’s members are profiting from patronage and corruption that there’s great resistance to reform. His external critics want him to act forcefully but his internal opponents are scheming to topple him.
The tragedy is that it’s the people who are being betrayed but the democratic check I counted on, the verdict of the ballot box, is no risk here.
The opposition parties are so weak that the ANC is still guaranteed its majorities. Ramaphosa cannot use that as a lever or a threat. If he cannot persuade, threaten or cajole his party into thinking beyond their own greed and wealth, the future of the country will be bleak.
The Times