[The Citizen had a headline running which said that the power outages which have hit Cape Town will actually continue for YEARS. They cited an expert, Andrew Kenny.

Apparently in Cape Town is suffering from rolling power outages. The electrical system in Cape Town is so overloaded that (like in Zimbabwe), they cut off power to areas on a rolling basis.

I have begun seriously thinking about buying a small generator and hooking it up to my home. Another friend of mine who works from home has also been planning to do the same thing. I am not going to do it yet – but if the power outages in Johannesburg get worse then I definitely am going to do it. I think it is a good long term investment, because it appears to me, these problems are not going to be solved soon.

What struck me in the news reports however was that that electricity consumption has been going up since 1994. And that got me wondering. Ever since the ANC came to power they started diverting large amounts of money away from paying (mostly white) areas towards the townships to electrify not only townships but squatter camps, etc. On the one hand they neglected the infrastructure which is crucial to the cities – and I have discussed this before.

Now let us look at the problem from another angle: The tremendous increase in CONSUMPTION. It appears to me that this massive electrification of the areas blacks live in along with the fact that the blacks don’t even pay for electricity could be the real cause of the massive increase in power consumption in this country.

But the blacks don’t pay for electricity. Remember in Soweto and other areas they had arrears of hundreds of millions of rands, and the Govt just wrote it off.

So now… all this socialism is coming home to roost. We’ve added tens of millions of (non-paying) blacks on to our electricity network and now the system is collapsing. The people, like you and me, who actually pay for electricity are now suffering because of all these black leeches. Businesses – the very things earning money and keeping this country going – are now losing hundreds of millions of rands because of these millions of black leeches who are contributing nothing.

Here we have another case of putting the cart before the horse. Of putting “feeling” before logic, with damage being done to the country as a whole.

They actually need to build MANY new power stations… but where will the money come from because the blacks just refuse to pay for electricity? (Actually they don’t want to pay for any of the normal services which one has in cities).

It appears to me that this massive crisis is the result of ANC illogic – of ANC socialism of always approaching problems backwards.

Do you know, THE CITIZEN also reported that ESKOM, our electricity supply company for all of S.Africa is also investing R37 million in beefing up Harare, Zimbabwe’s electrical infrastructure!!! ESKOM is overloaded in S.Africa and is yet being sent to try to hold Harare – a city in another country – together!!

11 Years after Apartheid… and our electrical infrastructure is collapsing. The ANC now says they will spend billions fixing it. But you must realise by now that the ANC’s idea of running this country is: Management by Crisis. They are incapable of proper forward planning. So they chuck money in to fix the things which are falling apart – because they did not do the proper routine maintenance to begin with. So while they divert R100 billion to electricity in another of their “5 year plans”… they will no doubt neglect some other aspect of society, and 3-5 years from now, some other portion of the country will start collapsing.

But don’t be fooled by all this. This is just that downwards spiral I have spoken of. It starts slowly, and the spiral just gets worse.

We must just do… for ourselves… and for our businesses… what the Govt can’t do: Think Ahead. Invest and plan so that we can function by ourselves.

Some of you will remember about 2 years ago, in my archive I posted an anaylsis by a geostrategist in Pretoria called: “S.Africa Beyond Democracy”. It spoke of how S.Africa will collapse and how Govt will be less and less able to carry out the normal functions of a Govt and how private business will start taking over those functions. Some of my geostrategist friends have predicted that S.Africa will be in an advanced state of collapse by 2010. So far, they seem to be on the money. Jan]