EDITORIAL: Just buy the diesel, Enoch

To hear Enoch Godongwana tell it, electricity is a nice-to-have, not an absolute essential. Interviewed by Bloomberg last Friday after the fallout from the Phala Phala report, the finance minister, asked whether his department has the cash for the billions Eskom needs to buy emergency diesel supplies, said simply: “We don’t have it.”

Now, if there’s any budgetary shuffling that has to be done to find the money Eskom needs, this is it. A record-breaking streak of load-shedding is having a catastrophic impact on South African industry, and the costs borne by businesses — from small enterprises to listed companies — to keep themselves in both electricity and water means more money chewed up by the cost line, less money for the fiscus.

It also means less money to invest by those businesses in their own operations — which is the basis of economic growth — and less money, ultimately, for pensioners. The vicious cycle created by a lack of power is so insidious that Godongwana’s ministry should be straining every last muscle to get Eskom on the right path. Failure to do so will lay waste to whatever economic aspirations we have left.