Mismanaged transformation is a bigot's best friend

Submitted by Rob Rutherford

As the thin blue line swept across the map and brought drizzle and ice to Gauteng recently, I imagined scenes across the country. Somewhere, a spinster found herself shivering over her knitting and resorted to hot marmalade toast. Incandescent bulbs zizzed in little houses under brooding afternoon cumulonimbi. Unsullied water gurgled down drains in steamy showers as The Washed bathed for heat. And, most certainly, I saw stews bubbling lonesomely on electric stoves while families hunkered down by the heater.

But lo! My imaginings began to add up to more than a collection of small comforts. As I let my mind stroll further, the implications of my daydream grew ever more sinister, until I was forced to confront the horrifically obvious.

Electricity demand was spiking.

Firmly back on frosty earth, I craved an assurance that that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. So, unwisely, I flicked on the radio.

The familiar jingle of my number-one news and emigration station chimed in cheerfully before a rather less cheerful interview with Andrew Etzinger, the radio face of the electricity crisis. It was worse than I could possibly have imagined. Yes, blackouts had started a-rocking and a-rolling. Yes, it was down to demand-side pressure on energy production. But wait, there was more. Coal supply was being hampered by the gooey paste that forms when coal dust and rain water mix. And most disturbingly, 18 generators had shut down, nine planned and nine unexpectedly so. The situation was even being described as just on the safe side of a knife-edge.

Two days into a winter dress rehearsal and the country was on its knees. The sweat chilled on my forehead, and indignation began to twist in my gut. I even allowed myself to imagine that spinster choking on a Seville peel. And then I composed myself enough to feel sheepish for wishing her harm.

I’m just as guilty of using electricity to toast bread (as if it were a crime). I also declined to pour my scorn on “Eskom”, that monolithic behemoth on which January’s angry victims poured theirs in buckets. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that the parastatal possesses a duck’s back. So I visualised my happy place: sitting in the shade by a rocky Dullstroom river, awash with rainbow trout whistling the tune of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

Tranquility returned to me, but the era of unbridled electricity supply did not. Also, it did nothing to erase an approximation of Etzinger’s voice from my head. “Nine unplanned generator failures,” he whispered.

“How does that happen?” I asked him. Silence. “Is it purely infrastructure stretched beyond breaking point?” No answer. “Is it because poor maintenance fails to fix generator faults before they become failures?” Mr Etzinger had clearly left the building. I wasn’t holding out much hope for a useful reply anyway.

It’s precisely this dearth of straight answers, both real and imagined, that forces me to speculate on the matter. Of course, there’ve been apologies (as opposed to real accountability) from the government for the failure to build more power stations when it was suggested that it do so. There have been allegations of inefficient coal delivery and dangerously low reserves. Also, there are mutterings of a skills drain from Eskom due to transformation “imperatives”.

With the questions raised by undetected generator faults, and unexpected failures, the mutterings about skills shortages linger in my mind. Does Eskom possess the skills to maintain its infrastructure? In the rush to turn white engineers and managers into black engineers and managers, were vital competencies transferred? Or are they casualties of a noble task executed ham-fistedly?

Had Andrew Etzinger popped into my head to respond to the latter, I don’t doubt that it would have been an automatic denial. Since he didn’t, I’ll go ahead and speculate that failed transformation is to some degree to blame for maintenance issues worsening the electricity situation. I’ll further conjecture that the generator failures are in part due to this weakness.

Before I lambaste myself for making a flimsy sequence of assumptions with dangerous racial undertones, I must point something out. Unlike many white South Africans, I don’t dismiss the electricity debacle, with the sweep of a hand, as the product of a black government. I don’t take it to confirm the preconception that it’s dicey to have black people in charge of a vital utility.

That ilk of white South African is having a field day of which I’m sure we’d rather see him deprived. That means that if poorly executed transformation is to blame for a flight of white skills and experience, and if that same process put callow black candidates in charge without proper mentoring from experienced campaigners, Eskom should shout it from the pylon tops.

For all I know, it could be sitting on a powerful reality check for Afro-pessimists, bigots and affirmative-action naysayers. It might just be able to tell us that it has ballsed up its transformation process, and that should maintenance issues arise, it’s not because it has too many black engineers, but rather too few skills. The principle of transformation would be heroically salvaged from the wreck of its implementation.

And with that, I return to my imaginings. I see a national electricity supplier where people with experience and knowledge are allowed to pass it on to the next generation because it’s only fair on the new boys. And a handsome rainbow trout leaps from the water with a whistle on his lips.

Rob Rutherford is a misanthropist. That means he spends his time hating people in general, but not necessarily you. He also enjoys referring to himself in the third person. When Rob isn’t doing either of those, he works as a freelance advertising copywriter and watches a lot of rugby. He is 26 years old and has fraise-blonde hair.