What happened to the lights?

Disappointment. A depressing word and one often found in the company of failure. It’s also happens to come to mind when considering the utterly dismal service our main, and only, electrical power supplier now provides. The sad thing about the need for load shedding - a great marketing term, which tries to pass off this euphemistic phrase for what is still a power failure to the end users - is that it now seems everyone in the industry was well aware of the impending crises and has been for the last several years.

Well that's great. Thanks for telling the rest of us. Or perhaps, if you did, please shout a little louder next time. Let's take a quick look at some of the statements made in previous years. I’m not trying to pick on anyone here, this is just , after all, a sample. I’m sure there is plenty of blame to spread among those not mentioned here. The 2003 Annual report shows T.S. Gcabashe as Chairman of the board and E. Banda as the Chief Executive Officer. It seems that problems with capacity are not an issue. In the section entitled 'Challenges ahead', we get this piece of drivel, 'Our challenge will be to embed the transformation process into every part of our daily working lives.' Well, you got that right; pity the process was about not having reliable power.

Jumping three years ahead to the 2006 Annual report. The chairman is now M.V. Moosa and the Chief Executive Officer is T.S. Gcabashe. The cute and colourful graph showing 'Timeframe for new capacity' seems to be fairly accurate with respect to current loads. But, in the Chairman's report we get this fine homily, 'Eskom’s financial results for the year underscore the strength of the group and should not be overshadowed by the unfortunate incidents in the Western Cape. Eskom’s response strategy was clearheaded and its partnerships with other role players ensured predictability and minimised inconvenience. This extraordinary combination of factors tested Eskom’s systems to the utmost and they passed, confounding those who argued that a national energy crisis was unfolding.' My, looks like some contrary people were actually telling the truth about an unfolding crisis.

In fact it seems that there were mounting concerns for future capacity problems in 2000. But, again, there was no need to worry; we had eight years to come up with something. Now we don't.