“Combustion is the problem – when you’re continuing to burn something, that’s not solving the problem ... wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power. The world can rapidly get 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources.”
– Prof Mark Jacobson, “No miracles needed,” Stanford University, 2023
Twenty years ago, I was fortunate to spend a couple of months exploring Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, Maputo, Harare and a few other towns and cities in southern Africa. Much of my trip was on a bicycle, and this gave me an opportunity on my leisurely peregrinations to notice the abandoned, rusting electric fences surrounding houses in the wealthier suburbs.
Closer inspection elicited the information that at some stage after independence, and partly because the “power grid” had been expanded to encompass previously neglected poor townships and rural areas, electricity supplies had become erratic (and in most cases still were), and since the entire purpose of electric fences was lost without power, they were disconnected.
From then on, guard duty was provided by a burly fellow equipped with a knobkierie, a whistle and a torch, who patrolled the perimeter – for those who could afford it, in any event.
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Closer inspection elicited the information that at some stage after independence, and partly because the “power grid” had been expanded to encompass previously neglected poor townships and rural areas, electricity supplies had become erratic (and in most cases still were), and since the entire purpose of electric fences was lost without power, they were disconnected.
From then on, guard duty was provided by a burly fellow equipped with a knobkierie, a whistle and a torch, who patrolled the perimeter – for those who could afford it, in any event.
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And now, with Eskom’s announcement that it will implement permanent daily rolling blackouts – or euphemistically named “load-shedding” – for the next two years, it looks as if South Africa is headed for a scenario similar to that of its neighbours to the north.
It’s certainly been a seismic moment for the country, with restaurants and food stores closed, hospitals threatened, water pump stations stopping and so on. Life “as we know it” will be bound to change. The old order is dead, the new has yet to be born and the interregnum is full of a variety of morbid symptoms, to paraphrase Gramsci; and the principal morbid symptom in South Africa is electricity outages.
But there are some insights to be drawn from the northern neighbours. The main lesson is that the reasons for their electricity problems was a lack of maintenance and funding and, sadly, corruption, which in all cases undermined the zeal of civil society to rectify matters.
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But there are some insights to be drawn from the northern neighbours. The main lesson is that the reasons for their electricity problems was a lack of maintenance and funding and, sadly, corruption, which in all cases undermined the zeal of civil society to rectify matters.
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Here is a good example from the Michelson Institute, an anti-corruption initiative backed by Western countries: rising demand for electricity in the Kenyan periphery has created opportunities for corruption. Decentralised solar electricity exists, but those running a business from home using modern appliances need more energy. Desperate for access to the electrical grid, people resort to bribing public officers to get connected. Criteria for inclusion in rural electrification initiatives are unclear and leave people confused. As a result, corruption appears to be a “problem-solver” in Kenya’s electricity market – a notion reinforced by corruption scandals hitting Kenya Power.
Kenya’s electricity grid centres on densely populated urban areas, where grid extension costs are relatively cheap. In rural-peripheral locations, however, grid electricity is either unavailable or unreliable. Frequent blackouts, exorbitant electricity bills, perceived corruption and frequent delays in the maintenance of power transmission systems in rural areas have driven massive uptake of solar photovoltaic systems.
Red tape is also a major challenge: it takes an average of 212 days to complete rural electrification projects in Kenya, resulting in widespread expectations among the rural population that they will encounter delays. Moreover, Kenya’s electricity parastatals have lost trust over the last few years owing to scandals. These include alleged cheating via the monthly billing system.
Corruption cartels and self-organisation of electricity still bedevil matters: vandalism of transformers to steal components (eg copper wires and precious liquids) and installation of substandard transformers affect power supply in most rural areas, while power theft was widespread in slum areas until the introduction of prepaid metering in 2011.
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Corruption cartels and self-organisation of electricity still bedevil matters: vandalism of transformers to steal components (eg copper wires and precious liquids) and installation of substandard transformers affect power supply in most rural areas, while power theft was widespread in slum areas until the introduction of prepaid metering in 2011.
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In Malawi, only a few years ago, its democracy was a beacon of hope. A union of the two main opposition parties won the 2020 elections (the “Tonse” alliance) and vowed to rid Malawi of its endemic corruption, which was affecting electricity supply. But it turned out to be a false dawn. Corruption continues to be a problem, seemingly embedded in the fabric of society.
Meanwhile, in Zambia, renewable energy projects remain a magnet for corrupt practices, despite efforts to harmonise anti-corruption laws and to reduce bureaucratic hurdles of the new government. Space doesn’t allow for a scan of the historical symbiotic relationship between energy and corruption in several other African countries not mentioned here, but the experience is similar.
So much, so familiar!
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But there is hope. All of these countries have been motivated by good intentions. They genuinely tried to expand electricity to the millions who didn’t have it.
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But there is hope. All of these countries have been motivated by good intentions. They genuinely tried to expand electricity to the millions who didn’t have it. In many cases, free elections have led to regime change because of the electricity issue. Several corrupt leaders have tried to hang on to office, but have been evicted by their countries’ constitutional courts. Democracy is alive and well. Not only that, but despite the electricity problems, infectious enthusiasm and town and city expansion are the norm. Visit Nairobi, Kigali and Addis, and you might be in boomtown.
And, as South African travellers to the north will know, there is the surprising sight of people keeping the landscape clean, picking up litter and so on. The social contract and civic pride seems to be intact.
Moreover, while thought leaders in all these countries have identified the link between energy supplies and corruption as a big problem, they have also identified a possible long-term solution which South Africa could possibly benefit from, given the inclination of corruption to thrive and survive like some kind of toenail fungus, against all odds, in every society. One might almost call it the flip side of the normal human condition.
What’s gone wrong with Mandela’s ANC?
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What’s gone wrong with Mandela’s ANC?
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Last week, you could hardly open a newspaper in the UK without seeing headlines about the electricity crisis. Daily blackouts have become the norm in South Africa, it seems. The background reporting noted the reasons for the crisis as corruption, pure and simple, just as it has been a problem in all the other African countries mentioned above; the outgoing CEO of Eskom confirmed as much, paying the price for his candour by unwittingly drinking cyanide, slipped with malevolent intent by persons unknown, into his tea.
Plenty of friends of South Africa – and there are still many out there – are baffled. What has gone wrong in Mandela’s ANC, they want to know. The rainbow nation that held out such promise?
It’s a very good question. Corruption is, of course, not unique to South Africa. It’s pretty endemic in plenty of countries, as we have seen. RW Johnson, who has been writing for various daily news outlets in South Africa, has probably explained best of all the structural problems which have bedevilled the ANC’s management of the country, and he does so through the prism of a social scientist. But somehow one feels there is more to it, which perhaps has to do with a lack of social cohesion in the racially and linguistically divided South African population at large, and which has a bearing on self-perception – an identity issue, in other words.
The French “existentialists” Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault came up with the term normative indicators, which were automatically allocated by parents to children at birth, based on their biology, eg, pink dresses and dolls for girls, cars for boys and so on. Foucault thought this a form of authoritarianism by society, imprisoning children forever in a sexual identity not of their choosing.
The same process also occurs in national identity, with language and cultural tropes automatically allocated by our parents to children at birth and then reinforced in school – indicators which determine one’s nationality and sense of self. In Africa, historical colonialism and religion imposed such indicators on both white and African populations – you took what you were given at birth with very little choice.
We live with the consequences to this day. South Africa is still, to a large extent obvious to any visitor, compartmentalised. There are evident differences between rich and poor, black and white, and the common purpose of the rainbow nation years seems to have evaporated. What is there to bind the population to a common social contract?
Sometimes it takes a crisis.
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Sometimes it takes a crisis.
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After a series of terrorist attacks in London in 2005, when targets were bombed by Islamist extremists, the government of the day introduced a number of policies and initiatives aimed at promoting British values in schools, designed to prevent radicalisation and extremism.
These values include respect for the rule of law, individual liberty, democracy, and mutual respect for and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. The promotion of these values in schools is part of the government’s efforts to create a more cohesive and integrated society at large; and because the values are taught in all four countries that comprise the UK, namely Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England, children are growing up with a common attachment to the UK at large, regardless of whether they speak Welsh, Gaelic or English.
The values are:
- Respect for the rule of law: respect for the rule of law means that everyone in society is treated equally and fairly, and everyone follows the same rules and laws. This value promotes a sense of order and stability in society, and helps to prevent crime and other harmful behaviour.
- Individual liberty: this allows people to pursue their own goals and interests, providing they do not harm others. This British value is based on the idea that people should be free to make their own decisions and choices, within the bounds of the law, of course.
- Democracy: democracy is the foundation of the UK’s political system. This value is based on the idea that everyone should have an equal say in how their country is run, and the government should be accountable to the people. All things voting, elections and referendums come in to play here.
- Mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs: this is the promotion of understanding and acceptance of people from different backgrounds and with different beliefs, which helps to create a more inclusive and diverse society.
The African experience: Getting the lights to work by teaching anti-corruption values
The British values approach is being adopted by a number of South Africa’s neighbours, all in a bid to fight corruption and antisocial crime by better educating future generations on what it means to be a good citizen. An example is Kenya, which has adopted a value-based education system not only to bring about a common understanding of the Kenyan constitution and its principles, but to solve a long-standing problem inherited from the old colonial-based curricula. This was that the examination focus of the traditional education system has been a major deterrent to the development of a culture of values and ethics in Kenya. The absence of values and ethical practices is the common denominator, having a bearing on acts of corruption, criminality and terrorism in the wider society. Four core values are being introduced into the curriculum at all levels: respect, tolerance, equality and peace. The system of assessment will move away from the narrow focus of regurgitating facts. Parents will also be sensitised to the new value-based system with an emphasis on the core values.
Zambia, too, has introduced values of an ethical education that helps choose the right path in life. It comprises some basic principles such as truthfulness, honesty, charity, hospitality, tolerance, love, kindness and sympathy.
These are just a couple of examples, but there’s a lot going on in several of South Africa’s neighbours which covers the field of values. The bottom line is that knowing right from wrong is a massive undertaking that is crucial to civic pride and the fight against corruption. The fight begins in school.
But how far is South Africa down this road?
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South Africa is, in theory at least, further down the road than many people might suppose, owing to the farsightedness of the late Prof Kader Asmal, ANC stalwart, who commissioned a working group on values in education in 2000.
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South Africa is, in theory at least, further down the road than many people might suppose, owing to the farsightedness of the late Prof Kader Asmal, ANC stalwart, who commissioned a working group on values in education in 2000. Asmal was especially close to Nelson Mandela and shared his ethical stance against corruption.
Asmal, at that time minister of education, presented it as a starting point in what he hoped would become a national debate on the appropriate values South Africa ought to embrace in its primary and secondary educational institutions. “It has implications, too, for the shaping more broadly of the quality of national character to which we as a people in a democracy wish to aspire,” he wrote. “It is not simply a matter of resources, though, but of attitude, interest and culture. Poorer countries like India or Nigeria have well-developed reading cultures. We are also bereft of a strong debating culture. It probably is rooted in our apartheid past, where rote learning and the slavish repetition of information were rewarded by a bureaucratic examination system; where the probing asking of questions was discouraged; and where an authoritarian attitude to learning and social conduct were expected of educators.”
He then enumerated the kinds of values that should be taught in South African schools: "By values we mean desirable qualities of character such as honesty, integrity, tolerance, diligence, responsibility, compassion, altruism, justice, respect and so on. We would like our young adults to possess these values and therefore our schooling system to actively promote them. The promotion of values is important not only for the sake of personal development, but also for the evolution of a South African national character. The definition we give to values today is also an avenue to imagining the future character of the South African nation.”
His report made an argument for the promotion of the values of tolerance, multilingualism and openness at South African schools. It also defines the moral aspirations of South African democracy as defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. “The definition we give to values today is an avenue to imagining the future character of the South African people. These values are therefore the moral aspirations which South Africans should regard as desirable.”
All this in 2000 – and yet, where South Africa’s neighbours, beset by corruption-caused electricity blackouts are somewhat belatedly introducing a values-based system in schools, Kader Asmal’s excellent ambition seems to have been stillborn. Now, it’s 23 years later, and there’s an interesting discussion going on in South Africa regarding the proposed new history curriculum at schools. This is intended to instil a more authentic identity and sense of self among generation X – “born after apartheid”.
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A simple four-value ethical approach may work better with the Kenya, or Kader Asmal, model, to bring tomorrow’s South Africans together, in order to put to bed any lingering dolour or unresolved feelings of injustice that get in the way of a common social contract across all divides of class and race. How else to restore electricity across the land?
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I’m not sure whether this facts-based, rote-learning approach will succeed, however. A simple four-value ethical approach may work better with the Kenya, or Kader Asmal, model, to bring tomorrow’s South Africans together, in order to put to bed any lingering dolour or unresolved feelings of injustice that get in the way of a common social contract across all divides of class and race. How else to restore electricity across the land?
It would be interesting to know what others think.
Also read:
Power crisis: Will Cape Town go completely off the Eskom grid?