President Cyril Ramaphosa must face down unions to embrace clean power
room of Scatec Solar in Cape Town Johan Badenhorst gazes at the six monitors on the wall. The screens display the status of the firm’s 16 plants in 11 countries. The three in South Africa are doing nicely, producing enough energy to power 93,000 homes. Problems are rare, says Mr Badenhorst, Scatec’s senior control officer, before correcting himself: once a bird dropped a tortoise on a solar panel, smashing the glass.
Eskom’s predicament has deep roots. Between the 1960s and 1990s the apartheid government built big and dirty power stations hoping cheap electricity would spark industrialisation. After white rule ended in 1994 the African National Congress had Eskom provide power to the more than two-thirds of black households that lacked electricity, one of the fastest electrification projects in history.
One reason is that some of Eskom’s bosses have spent more time stealing than managing. Cronies of Mr Zuma and his patrons, the Gupta brothers, are alleged to have siphoned off tens of billions of rand in inflated or irregular contracts. The utility sells less electricity than it did in 2007 but spends three times as much on employees and five times as much on coal .
On February 7th Mr Ramaphosa said that Eskom would be broken up. It was the seventh time that a president has used his State of the Nation Address to make such a pledge. But this time may be different because there is a clear alternative to the coal-dominated monolith—a market-based model that is open to renewable energy.
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