> From: "Mark Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 18:28:35 +0100
> Do you even acknowledge as a problem, the global endemic energy
> scarcity which has seen per capita energy consumption stagnant since 1973
> and which is a very real problem precisely in those newly neoliberalised
> zones (S America, E Europe, S Africa) which now suffer chronic energy
> shortages (gasoline famines, brownouts etc) and which cannot hope to find
> the capital to invest in new infrastructure?
Minor correction from sooty Jo'burg, comrade, where there's still
a quarter excess electricity generating capacity, even on a cold
winter day like today...
(Sunday Independent, 27 July 1999)
Power to the powerful:
Ideology of apartheid energy still distorts electricity sector
by Patrick Bond
South Africa's surreal energy problems reflect the
kinds of contradictions you would expect during a
transition from apartheid economic history to a
contemporary electricity pricing system all too often
based on (`neoliberal') market-policy for households,
complicated by massive subsidies for big
corporations, in one of the world's most unequal
societies.
There are at least three world-class development
disasters here: our economy's skewed over-reliance on
(and oversupply of) pollution-causing, coal-generated
electricity; the lack of equitable access amongst
households along class/race lines (with serious
adverse gender implications); and periodic township
rioting associated with power cuts resulting from
nonpayment.
Plenty of other challenges for a revitalised
energy policy could be mentioned. But assuming
Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wants justice to be
done during the ANC's second term (and is less
distracted by shady Liberian consultants or
groundless attacks on the auditor general than her
predecessor), merely addressing electricity
distribution would require a serious challenge to
corporate power and neoliberal ideology. Instead of
praising the filthy rich (who can forget?), the
minister would have to subsidise filthy impoverished
townships currently suffocating under winter coal
fumes.
An outstanding recent book, The Political Economy
of South Africa by Ben Fine and Zav Rustomjee, puts
this sector into economic perspective. Here we locate
electricity at the heart of the economy's `Minerals-
Energy Complex,' a `system of accumulation' unique to
this country. Mining, petro-chemicals, metals and
related activities which historically accounted for
around a quarter of economic activity typically
consumed 40 percent of all electricity.
Thus Eskom was centrally responsible for South
Africa's economic growth, but, Fine and Rustomjee
show, at the same time fostered a debilitating
dependence on the (declining) mining industry.
Economists refer to this as a `Dutch disease,' in
memory of the damage done to Holland's economic
balance by its cheap North Sea oil.
South African electricity consumption (per
capita) soared to a level similar to Britain, even
though black--`African'--South Africans were denied
domestic electricity for decades. To accomplish this
feat, Eskom had to generate emissions of greenhouse
gasses twice as high per capita as the rest of the
world, alongside enormous surface water pollution,
bucketing acid rain and dreadfully low safety/health
standards for coal miners.
To what end? Today, most low-income South
Africans still rely for a large part of their
lighting, cooking and heating energy needs upon
paraffin (with its burn-related health risks), coal
(with high levels of domestic and township-wide air
pollution) and wood (with dire consequences for
deforestation). Women, traditionally responsible for
managing the home, are more affected by the high cost
of electricity and spend far more time and energy
searching for alternative energy.
Ecologically-sensitive energy sources--such as
solar, wind and tidal--have barely begun to be
explored, while the few hydropower plants (especially
in neighbouring Mozambique) are based on
controversial large dams that, experts argue, do more
harm than developmental good.
Some inherited electricity dilemmas stem from a
racist, irrational and socially-unjust history.
Conventional wisdom even before 1948, we must never
forget, was that `temporary sojourners' were in
cities merely to work; they would not consume much--
certainly not household appliances--since their wages
were pitiably low. As Jubilee 2000 South Africa
observes with justifiable bitterness, more than half
of the World Bank's $200+ million in apartheid
credits from 1951-66 were for Eskom's expansion,
including coal-powered stations. But none of the
benefits found their way to the homes of the majority
of citizens. Even by 1994, fewer than four in ten
African households had electricity.
Meanwhile, corporate South Africa suffered the
opposite problem--an embarrassment of energy riches--
especially when terribly poor planning at Eskom two
decades ago led to massive overcapacity (which at
peak in the early 1990s allowed for more than 30%
more generation than demanded). The late-apartheid
solution, inherited and amplified today, was to give
the corporates ever-cheaper power and penalise the
poor with extremely expensive prepaid meter systems
(which are never installed, note angry community
activists, in bourgeois, formerly white areas).
The meagre electricity consumed by low-income
households (less than 3 percent of the total) costs
them at least four times more per kiloWatt hour than
paid by well-connected corporates. Was it a
coincidence, one might reasonably enquire, that
Eskom's finance officer revolved out the door to head
a major division of Gencor-Billiton, and then won the
same cheap pricing deal for the ill-fated Coega zinc
smelter that he'd earlier given Alusaf? (Meanwhile,
thousands of nearby Port Elizabeth township
households had their power cut since 1997, due to
poverty.)
Defenders of the big corporates argued they help
mop up the excess capacity and do so at off-peak
hours, and that the poor create larger administrative
costs per unit. As a result, policy avoided the kinds
of `cross-subsidies'--by which big users pay more per
unit than those consuming a bare minimum--that the
RDP called for, and that are finally being installed
in some large urban water distributions. (Even a
kiloWatt hour free per day as a `lifeline' to all
consumers could have a dramatic effect on consumption
for those who need it, while higher prices would
potentially teach big users to conserve.)
Instead, government policy has imposed `cost-
reflective tariffs,' as a 1995 document insisted. The
1998 White Paper is an improvement on previous
versions, but it too makes the counterproductive
argument that `Cross-subsidies should have minimal
impact on the price of electricity to consumers in
the productive sectors of the economy.'
Worse, the Department of Provincial and Local
Government's Municipal Infrastructure Investment
Framework supports only the installation of 5-8 Amp
connections for households with less than R800 per
month income, which does not offer enough power to
turn on a hotplate or a single-element heater.
(Thanks to social movement advocacy, this is at least
better than the original policy, drafted largely by
the World Bank in 1994-95, which had offered low-
income households no electricity hookup.)
The 1995 energy policy also argued that `Fuelwood
is likely to remain the primary source of energy in
the rural areas.' As if on cue, Eskom began to wind
down its rural electrification programme and does not
envisage electrifying the nation's far-flung schools.
Notwithstanding Eskom's commercialisation fetish, its
economists had badly miscalculated rural
affordability. Paying as much as R0,48 per hour
(compared to a corporate average of R0,06 and bigger
discounts for the Alusaf), rural women use up their
pre-paid metre cards within a week and can't afford
to buy another until the next pension payout.
But in pricing power out of reach of the poor,
the well-paid economists from Eskom, the World Bank
and government refused to incorporate `multiplier
effects' that would benefit broader society, were
people granted a small free lifeline electricity
supply: better public health, a cleaner environment,
more SMMEs, infrastructure construction jobs and more
equal relations between men and women.
If Mlambo-Ngcuka cares about such `public goods'
as much as `getting the prices right' (for
privatisation?), she now has a chance to transform
neoliberal electricity policy, muffling that
suspicious echo of apartheid-era power.
