Power crisis cost SA R50 billion

Think about the numbers. Think about how much money ANC misrule has cost the country. Hundreds of thousands of skilled individuals have left the country with all their assets. Count the cost of all the productivity lost as a result.

Count the loss of jobs and job creation and tax revenue lost. Combine the cost of affirmative action and BEE policies on the economy.

Count the cost of crime. It must be running into the hundreds of billions. Now add the cost of the Eskom fiasco to the tally. That's what having the ANC in power means. Now stay at home next year at election time.

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The power crisis of 2007/08 cost the South African economy R50-billion, the National Energy Regulator said in Johannesburg.

"One of the positives was customer awareness of power conservation," the regulator's CEO Smunda Mokoena told a conference entitled "A constructive response to the power crisis from the mining and metallurgical industry."

He chose to call it a "power emergency" instead of a power crisis because, as he put it, the situation had been "controllable".

It had also led to a renewed focus on the introduction of non-Eskom power generation, he added.

"Furthermore, the emergency identified improvements needed to industry codes and standards and created an awareness of future electricity prices."

Mokoena said that before 2007/08, there was lack of awareness in the country about dwindling coal stocks. "The situation took many by surprise. The only response Eskom had available to the crisis was to introduce load shedding, despite the devastating effect it had on the SA economy and on SADC - but Eskom acted correctly."

Mokoena said SA had come close to a total blackout. "It was the voluntary load reduction of the public and industry that allowed Eskom to get its coal stocks under control."