[R-G] Power Failures Outrage South Africa

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/africa/31safrica.html>
January 31, 2008
Power Failures Outrage South Africa
By BARRY BEARAK and CELIA W. DUGGER

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — At first, the power blackouts seemed a
mere nuisance, the electricity suddenly dead for two or three hours at
a time, two or three times a day. Radio announcers jocularly advised
listeners to make their morning toast by vigorously rubbing two pieces
of bread together and wisecracked about amorous uses for the extra
darkness.

But after three weeks of chronic failures —after regularly irregular
vexations with lifeless computers, stove tops and stoplights — public
forbearance has given way to outrage. This nation, long a reliable
repository of cheap, plentiful electricity, finds itself pitifully
short of juice.

The government has confessed to an "electricity emergency" and has
begun a program of rationing for industrial users. This is a
mortifying turn for a country that considers itself the powerhouse of
Africa and resists comparisons to its underdeveloped, famine-plagued
neighbors.

But electricity shortages, now expected to be a fact of life for the
next five years, are more than an embarrassment. They threaten
continued strong growth here in a nation that accounts for a third of
sub-Saharan Africa's economic output and ranks among the world's top
25 countries in gross domestic product.

Because South Africa is an engine of growth for the region, a slowdown
here would also affect its neighbors, undermining global efforts to
reduce poverty and damaging South Africa's own drive to slash its
woeful unemployment rate of 25.5 percent.

One of this nation's largest employers, the mining industry, virtually
halted production for four days last week because Eskom, the dominant,
government-controlled utility, could not guarantee enough power to
ventilate and cool the deep underground shafts. Companies that mine
gold and platinum restarted production only on Tuesday after emergency
negotiations with Eskom, South Africa's Chamber of Mines said.

"The shutdown of the mining industry is an extraordinary,
unprecedented event," said Anton Eberhard, a business school professor
at the University of Cape Town and an energy expert. "That's a
powerful message, massively damaging to South Africa's reputation for
new investment. Our country was built on the mines."

The current crisis stems from Eskom's lack of capacity to generate
enough power, and its inability to keep many of its plants working.

The predicament was foretold. In 1998, a government report warned that
at the rate the economy was growing, the nation faced serious
electricity shortages by 2007 unless capacity was expanded. The
government, led by President Thabo Mbeki, who assumed office in June
1999, tried unsuccessfully to induce private investors to build
additional power plants. Only belatedly did it permit Eskom to begin
the necessary expansion.

"The president has accepted that this government got its timing
wrong," Alec Erwin, the public enterprises minister, said last Friday
at a much-anticipated news briefing that broke a mystifying public
silence.

This statement was a rare admission of fault by a prideful,
post-apartheid government. Mr. Mbeki, now in the final year of his
second term, can legitimately boast of many successes, among them the
provision of electricity to the impoverished masses. Since the African
National Congress came to power in 1994, South Africa has doubled the
percentage of its population connected to the grid to more than 70
percent.

Though the government insists it will not allow the power crisis to
jeopardize future industrial projects and interfere with plans to play
host to the 2010 World Cup in soccer, many experts consider the power
shortage a lamentable foul-up likely to undo some of Mr. Mbeki's
economic accomplishments.

"The warnings were well-known, but the government was too aloof and
arrogant to act," said William Mervin Gumede, the author of "Thabo
Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the A.N.C." (Zebra Press, 2005,
with a revised edition in 2007). "This is simply disastrous for the
economy. You can throw out all the goals of 6 percent economic
growth."

South Africans are appalled by the daily interruptions to their lives.
Workers sit idle, televisions flick into darkness and silence,
elevators stall between floors, gas stations cannot pump, cakes remain
forever half-baked. Every intersection with disabled traffic lights
becomes a four-way stop, with drivers in each direction maddeningly
delayed as the endless lines of cars inch forward.

Eskom calls the power failures "load shedding," rotating the cuts
around neighborhoods, allocating the inconvenience. The utility has a
Web site with a dial in the corner; a needle gyrates between "safe"
and "danger."

The load shedding has three degrees of severity, and on the worst
days, a community may experience half a day without power. The site
provides a timetable for each area, but the schedule is often wrong.
In coming months, when rationing is extended to residential users, the
power shutdowns should be more predictable.

At Sandton City, suburban Johannesburg's gargantuan, upscale shopping
complex, the power cuts leave the mall with the eerie stillness of an
interrupted stage performance. Customers and sales clerks appear
stunned by the abrupt gloom, wondering whether to give up or carry on.

At The Bread Basket, a gourmet food store in the mall, the 33
employees hurry to complete their transactions in the near dark.
Backup power supplies keep the cash registers working for a few
minutes.

Then the store's doors reluctantly close, with the scones, croissants
and baguettes left stillborn in the ovens, the tuna salad, couscous
and tzatziki dip slowly going bad as the refrigeration cases lose
their cool.

"What can we do?" said the owner, Panos Avraamides. "We throw out all
the salads, all the dips, all the antipastos, I let the employees have
a one-hour break. Then they come back and stand around and do
nothing."

Norman Samuel, the manager of Etkinds, a nearby camera and binocular
store, said glumly that his sales were down 40 percent. "People leave
the shopping center when the lights go out," he said. "Who wants to be
here? The food court gets all smoked up because the ventilators don't
work.

"We were all optimistic about this country's growth, but this will
destroy it. I have sales reps coming into the store because they want
me to carry their product. What can I tell them? I'm already cutting
inventory."

Most merchants are losing a day of sales each week. In Alexandra, the
poor township just blocks from Sandton, John Kendia shuts his clothing
shop with each power failure. "We've had the lights go out for four
and five hours," he said. "Who except thieves want to be in the store
in the dark?"

Expensive gas-fueled generators can reawaken the light, and worried
merchants and wealthy homeowners have quickly bought the machinery.

Now the equipment is scarce. Mark Haycock owns a hardware store in the
city of George in Western Cape Province. "I have four suppliers, but
they tell me that I'll be lucky to get more generators in by March,"
he said.

For its part, the government is beseeching customers to conserve
power, an unfamiliar appeal in an energy-profligate nation. It has
announced subsidies for solar-powered water heaters and a program to
exchange energy-wasting light bulbs for more efficient ones.
Solar-powered stoplights are supposed to free traffic from the whims
of the enfeebled power grid.

And of course, the crisis itself enforces a sort of moderation.

"Because of this situation, economic growth just stops," said Andrew
Kenny, an engineering consultant. "In that way, the problem solves
itself."

Gavin du Venage contributed reporting from George, South Africa.


--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>