re posted from IOL
The breakup of the utility under the guise of a “just” energy transition is not just a threat to affordable energy but also to the integrity of South Africa as a state.
Breaking up Eskom will be the end of South Africa
Eskom came into existence as a nationalisation project when several private electricity suppliers were bought out by the state. Picture Henk Kruger/African News Agency(ANA)
By Hugo Kruger 4 July 2023
“Energy equals quality of life, and we intervene there only with the most convincing of cases.” – Dr Michael Kelly at Cambridge’s Electrical Engineering Department – Energy Utopias and Engineering Realities (2019)
The voices behind the privatisation of Eskom will have to be forgiven by our grandchildren one day if they didn’t read Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
The breakup of the utility under the guise of a “just” energy transition is not just a threat to affordable energy but also to the integrity of South Africa as a state.
The misconception is that Eskom only provides kilowatt-hours to our homes and factories when, in fact, electricity plays a central role in human habitat creation.
Eskom’s historical role is poorly understood by South African intellectuals because the Afrikaners drew the wrong conclusion from their own history. The Afrikaner elites throughout the Apartheid years made the argument that it was the Afrikaans language that brought development and upliftment following the tragedy of the Anglo Boer War.
Although it is true that language played a unifying role, this is a misreading of history, as it stands in contrast to countries like Singapore which developed through the colonial language – English.
It was not language that uplifted the Afrikaner but rather a search for energy, and in particular, low entropy energy from coal – the backbone of the industrial revolution.
The first director of Eskom, Hendrik van der Bijl, was an engineer who worked for General Electric in the United States. After an invitation from General Jan Smuts, he returned home with the aim of bringing America’s New Deal to South Africa.
Eskom came into existence as a nationalisation project when several private electricity suppliers were bought out by the state.
Eskom was run as a non-profit utility with the mandate to only recover its own cost of its projects.
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