LETTER: Privatise Eskom to end woes

SA’s already low electricity supply is set to only worsen under Eskom’s government monopoly, as reported in your editorial (“SA power supply constraints likely to worsen”, November 7).

These are drastic and dire times. Yet government refuses to budge from its ideological insanity and make the correct policy changes to address the electricity crisis.

It’s easy to point fingers at bad leadership, cadre deployment and corruption for causing Eskom’s collapse, but all of these ignore the inherent problem with the parastatal — its status as a state-owned monopoly.

Without competition and the need to earn an honest profit, Eskom has carte blanche to keep on failing. No-one is allowed to replace it. And without the incentive to earn cash from willing consumers, it has no real drive to perform better. Or even adequately.

Eskom workers and officials keep getting their bonuses and salaries while the country collapses under rolling blackouts. A private company would have gone bankrupt decades ago and been replaced by a more prudent competitor.

If government was serious about saving the economy and solving the electricity crisis, it would abolish the Electricity Act, decentralise Eskom’s assets and privatise the lot. Allow any private company to become an electricity producer with minimal paperwork. Do not have arbitrary limits to what can be fed into the grid.

Let companies flood the market with electricity. Stabilise the supply. And through market processes and sound economics, establish realistic and sustainable electricity prices.

The solution to Eskom is simple. But this government doesn’t want a simple and sound solution. It wants to continue its ideological self-destruction. Even if it means taking the country down with it.

Nicholas Woode-Smith, Cape Town

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