The appropriate way to have dealt with the lack of power supply in South Africa would have been for the price of electricity to rise in a competitive market.
This article was first published by BizNews on 6 October 2023 Eskom continues to collapse, leaving South Africans in the dark and the cold, even as winter
The business-as-usual approach is fraught with risk, which is why the FMF has proposed that Tshwane either privatise the power stations outright, or subject them to a stateproof lease.
Eskom cannot be trusted with “load-limiting”, as the same kind of centralisation is what caused the energy crisis in the first place.
If electricity generation, transmission and distribution had been in private hands, with no barriers to entry preventing competitors from entering the market, this situation would not have arisen.
It is undesirable for planners to put together an overall centrally devised plan, with the intention of imposing such plans on the country’s energy industry and consumers, covering all the aspects of production, transmission, transportation, and distribution of energy in South Africa. No planner or group of planners has the necessary knowledge to carry out such a task.
