S.Africa's Collapsing Infrastructure by Jan Lamprecht
In the last few months I have been reporting on the slow but steady crumbling of S.Africa’s infrastructure.
In recent years Johannesburg’s electricity network has suffered from hundreds of blackouts. But these are on the increase. Johannesburg is of course the heart of S.Africa, and indeed of the entire African continent. Johannesburg is to Africa what New York is to America.
It is not just the electrical network which is suffering but also the telephone network which is in bad shape.
There have been outbreaks of diarrhoea and even typhoid in parts of S.Africa due to drinking water not being properly treated. Outbreaks of diarrhoea are now very common.
It should be remembered that under White rule, all of these things were functioning. So why are they collapsing now?
There are several causes. The main ones are:
Affirmative Action and the retrenching of skilled white workers and managers.
The redirecting of funds away from normal routine maintenance towards socialist projects for the blacks. The overloading of the current systems because the blacks do not pay for the electricity. Lack of management planning and forecasting.
This is the side of black rule which has always scared me. Simple things which used to work, without any problems for decades suddenly come to a grinding halt. Often, the Government’s attitude is to skimp on certain things like routine maintenance as much as possible and to later only react when things come to a grinding halt. They operate in “Management by Crisis” mode all the time.
By skimping on simple routine maintenance tasks, they are creating even bigger problems. To fix Johannesburg’s electricity supply problems properly will require approximately R2 billion. But they refuse to spend that money. So they instead asked the engineers what is the bare minimum required to patch the system. As a result they will only spend approximately R800 million on the infrastructure.
Would it not have cost a lot less if they had instead stuck to the routine maintenance plans?
Cape Town has been suffering from massive power outages for the last few weeks. It turned out that one of the generators at the Koeberg nuclear power station broke down.
On 1st March 2006, we had our Municipal/Local Govt elections. Just the night before, Alec Erwin, one of our Govt Ministers and an open communist held a press conference. He went on to suddenly blame the Koeberg problem on political sabotage! He claimed that the Govt had asked National Intelligence and the Police to investigate sabotage and the investigation was proceeding well! This was just another typical communist attempt at deflecting attention away from the real cause which is ANC mismanagement. The next day the opposition political parties decried this blatant lie.
Another major cause of our infrastructure problems come from ANC socialism which diverts funds away from formerly white suburbs and from the businesses to the blacks in the townships and shanty towns. The ANC has diverted countless billions of Rands to electrifying townships and squatter camps. They put up telephone lines as well.
In the days of Apartheid, the Govt had followed a more logical process of relocating these blacks in their squatter camps into more organised urban areas. Such relocation costs far less than building an entire infrastructure just to service people who have thrown together a few shacks. The world and the blacks hated it, but it was logical and it cost a lot less money.
Now the ANC is doing everything in the opposite way. But it will result in much more serious problems. By doing so they are overloading the systems. They are creating new infrastructure which will also have to be serviced while at the same time neglecting existing infrastructure (which also services the businesses).
And finally, the blacks do not want to pay for electricity or water. Billions of rand have had to be written off already.
Eleven years of ANC misrule is now resulting in the infrastructure collapsing. But the worst lies ahead.
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Original Investigative Journalism from the
Columnist Guild News Bureau
In recent years Johannesburg’s electricity network has suffered from hundreds of blackouts. But these are on the increase. Johannesburg is of course the heart of S.Africa, and indeed of the entire African continent. Johannesburg is to Africa what New York is to America.
It is not just the electrical network which is suffering but also the telephone network which is in bad shape.
There have been outbreaks of diarrhoea and even typhoid in parts of S.Africa due to drinking water not being properly treated. Outbreaks of diarrhoea are now very common.
It should be remembered that under White rule, all of these things were functioning. So why are they collapsing now?
There are several causes. The main ones are:
Affirmative Action and the retrenching of skilled white workers and managers.
The redirecting of funds away from normal routine maintenance towards socialist projects for the blacks. The overloading of the current systems because the blacks do not pay for the electricity. Lack of management planning and forecasting.
This is the side of black rule which has always scared me. Simple things which used to work, without any problems for decades suddenly come to a grinding halt. Often, the Government’s attitude is to skimp on certain things like routine maintenance as much as possible and to later only react when things come to a grinding halt. They operate in “Management by Crisis” mode all the time.
By skimping on simple routine maintenance tasks, they are creating even bigger problems. To fix Johannesburg’s electricity supply problems properly will require approximately R2 billion. But they refuse to spend that money. So they instead asked the engineers what is the bare minimum required to patch the system. As a result they will only spend approximately R800 million on the infrastructure.
Would it not have cost a lot less if they had instead stuck to the routine maintenance plans?
Cape Town has been suffering from massive power outages for the last few weeks. It turned out that one of the generators at the Koeberg nuclear power station broke down.
On 1st March 2006, we had our Municipal/Local Govt elections. Just the night before, Alec Erwin, one of our Govt Ministers and an open communist held a press conference. He went on to suddenly blame the Koeberg problem on political sabotage! He claimed that the Govt had asked National Intelligence and the Police to investigate sabotage and the investigation was proceeding well! This was just another typical communist attempt at deflecting attention away from the real cause which is ANC mismanagement. The next day the opposition political parties decried this blatant lie.
Another major cause of our infrastructure problems come from ANC socialism which diverts funds away from formerly white suburbs and from the businesses to the blacks in the townships and shanty towns. The ANC has diverted countless billions of Rands to electrifying townships and squatter camps. They put up telephone lines as well.
In the days of Apartheid, the Govt had followed a more logical process of relocating these blacks in their squatter camps into more organised urban areas. Such relocation costs far less than building an entire infrastructure just to service people who have thrown together a few shacks. The world and the blacks hated it, but it was logical and it cost a lot less money.
Now the ANC is doing everything in the opposite way. But it will result in much more serious problems. By doing so they are overloading the systems. They are creating new infrastructure which will also have to be serviced while at the same time neglecting existing infrastructure (which also services the businesses).
And finally, the blacks do not want to pay for electricity or water. Billions of rand have had to be written off already.
Eleven years of ANC misrule is now resulting in the infrastructure collapsing. But the worst lies ahead.
Original Investigative Journalism from the
Columnist Guild News Bureau
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