ROB ROSE: The depressing truth about Eskom’s blackouts
Eskom has got to where it is now by ignoring, for many years, red flags and warnings of looming disaster. There won’t be an overnight solution
There’s a startling video doing the rounds, taken at what is meant to be a coal pile at one of SA’s power stations that supply Eskom. Only, instead of coal, there are mountains of what seems, pretty plainly, to just be grey rocks and sand. You’d have a better chance of burning a beaker of Theresa May’s tears. But the point is, for these rocks, Eskom and by extension the taxpayer, has lavished R900 a ton on the entrepreneur who shovelled whatever he could find at the nearest construction site into his bakkie. PODCAST: Listen to expert commentary on the issue Subscribe: iono.fm | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Player.fm This example, of course, is just one small pocket of SA’s brittle energy infrastructure that speaks so much about the weakness of the entire fabric. You can bet that it’s not the only power station sporting a pile of rubble, rather than anything approaching combustible coal. As South Africans seethe about the series of fitful blackouts seizing the country, i...
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