It was rational for President Jacob Zuma to try to copy China’s successful economic development model. Also obvious is that it was not possible for Zuma to localise China’s low wages and exploitative working conditions (Trying to copy the dragon, October 24). The chairman of the Industrial Development Corporation and Eskom, Dr HJ van Eck, stated in 1962 that instead of relying on cheap labour, the key to SA’s industrial development and economic growth was electricity — lots of it at low cost. A month back, Goldman Sachs stated that Eskom had sabotaged the South African economy. Since 2007, GDP growth per capita has been negative, as it will be for another dreadful decade, thanks to Eskom. Eskom was and still is central to the energy-intensive South African economy, and low power prices are essential to export manufactured goods competitively. But when the ANC came to power, the first thing it did was to change the legislation applicable to Eskom to start capturing its massive cash f...
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