PETER BRUCE: How the pilferers of state capture have left SA in darkness
Extract
Vincent van Gogh once said: “Put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” He was an artist. Had he been a patriotic and honest South African politician now, he would probably say the same.
This country is in such trouble you sometimes just want to bury your head in your hands and weep. Today, as I write this, is Friday November 30, 20bloody18. Eskom has just announced it will implement stage 2 load-shedding nationwide.
If it did not do this, the power monopoly says, by implication, there is a real risk of the entire electricity grid going down. A national blackout.
We already knew that if there was one straw that could break our South African backs it would be Eskom. There’s a lot going on, sure. Commissions of inquiry; unbelievable evidence from ANC ministers who either tolerated state capture or did not do enough to stop it when they had the power to try. A fightback from the Gupta-funded looter wing of the ANC, including a former president. The meltdown of the EFF as the scale of its own chicanery in the collapse of VBS Mutual Bank becomes clearer. A weird contortion in the DA as it defends, needlessly, its very good chief whip for not having a degree and manages somehow to pour scorn on education generally. But even if all of that was not happening, even if the government was strong and united and efficient and rational, even if the ANC were united and visionary, none of it would matter if Eskom cannot be fixed. And the signs increasingly are that it indeed cannot be fixed. The reign of Jacob Zuma and the preening quislings he put in charg...
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