LETTER: Move over, Eskom

Eskom should not be merely seeking to buy 1,000MW from the private sector (“Eskom scrambles to buy 1,000MW from private sector”, September 18). We are at a stage, and have been for decades, where Eskom needs to be completely privatised.

That 1,000MW is not even a drop in the ocean for what we need to solve our power crisis. Stage 6 load-shedding isn’t just a quarter of the day in darkness. It’s a threat to the viability of our infrastructure. Communications go down, water is not purified, crime rises in the dark. The catastrophic possibility of grid collapse edges ever closer.

We should not be impressed that Eskom has deigned to buy 1,000MW from the private sector. The private sector should be the sole producer of electricity. Not a privatised Eskom alone, but a decentralised, vibrant and huge electricity industry with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of companies competing to power the grid.

Eskom and the government have proven incapable of powering a country reliably for almost two decades. An examination of Eskom’s history shows the rot actually started at its inception 100 years ago.

Purchasing 1,000MW from the private sector is a cheap political move to look like they have things under control, when in actuality the dam walls have broken long ago. It is time that Eskom relinquishes control and responsibility and a deregulated electricity industry moves in to take its place.

Nicholas Woode-Smith, Cape Town

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