EDITORIAL: Eight stages of chaos

Stage 6 load-shedding, the jargon the government uses to describe blackouts necessitated by its inability to manage an energy system it owns, has passed through the steps of South Africans’ coping mechanisms: disbelief, rage, despair and now internet memes.

Our sense of humour in the face of catastrophe is legendary due to the unfortunate preponderance of catastrophe in national life. But no meme can prepare us for the consequences of stage 8 load-shedding, described by Eskom last week as “highly likely” as we head into the winter cold.

Our message to Eskom is this: you had better not. As this newspaper reported, stage 8 load-shedding will have frightening consequences in hospitals, schools and offices. It will hit food prices, the cold chain, agriculture and food security. The knock-on effects of power cuts on the currency, inflation, interest rates, GDP and employment are already clear. Stage 8 will make it exponentially worse. It is a level of misery we cannot afford.

It would all feel less worrying if there was a sense that there is focus on what matters. The plan to fix broken power stations presupposes that the issues that destroyed them are gone and that Kusile can be fixed. They both seem like naive assumptions.

To measure the government’s seriousness, we should not take our eye off its mysterious obsession with Karpowership’s floating gas geysers, which will cost hundreds of billions of rand for very few megawatts.

The project is the canary in the coal mine. If the government is still talking about Karpowership then it is not completely serious. Regrettably, it is still talking about Karpowership.