SA's electricity crisis: a dim legacy

South Africa's electricity crisis is the result of a series of failures over the past 30 years, says Mark Swilling, distinguished professor of Sustainable Development at Stellenbosch University.

- Mark Swilling

"In 1994, apartheid ended and the ANC won South Africa's first ever democratic election, promising 'Electricity for All' as part of its Reconstruction and Development Programme.

Back then, only 36% of all South Africans had electricity in their homes. The development programme promised to double that number by electrifying an additional 2,5 million homes by 2000. This seemed achievable. During the 1980s, the state-owned power utility Eskom's build programme was so aggressive it had surplus electricity. Some power stations even had to be mothballed.

By 1994, South Africa's coal industry was generating high-quality coal that was exported mainly to Europe. These earnings cross-subsidised low-quality, inexpensive coal provided by mines built next door to the coal-fired power stations, which was delivered affordably by conveyor belt. These factors made electricity very cheap.

Thirty years later, Eskom is the biggest challenge facing the country. It has a huge debt of over R400 billion (about US$21 billion) despite receiving over R270 billion (US$14 billion) in government bailouts since 2008. Besides this, anyone who is 17 or younger has never experienced what it means to live without regular scheduled power cuts, known locally as loadshedding. These are a permanent feature of daily life and are causing an economic crisis.

I have researched transitions for 30 years. If the South African government does not want to repeat the mistakes of the past, it must urgently end the current crisis by shifting decisively towards a renewable energy economy based on South Africa's extraordinary wind and solar resources.

WHAT WENT WRONG