Eskom – the ANC’s nemesis

After this morning’s A Libertarian/Anarchist Experiment post, I’ve been thinking about another sort of anarchist experiment. Cape Town city. The power cuts have been ravaging the city, are out of control, and are having a huge impact on people’s lives. Those of an apocalyptic bent may be interested in seeing how Cape Town is coping, seeing the power cuts as a precursor of a coming energy crunch.

Not very well. Many businesses will have to shut down if this continues – restaurants can’t prepare food, people working from home (such as myself) sit thankful for the laptop’s battery, and enjoy the chance to catch up on some reading. Traffic has got exceptionally heavy as more people take cars with the trains at the mercy of Eskom. Petrol shortages loom as the refineries are not working at full capacity.

I won’t continue to paint the picture, as the mainstream press has been full of human interest stories, economic analysis, fault-finding, and of course, with an election looming, political responses. Bloggers have also been active with someamongus highlighting the poor planning that led to the debacle, and Farrel Jifson imagining the harsh words being said by the city council to Eskom. I believe the ANC will suffer seriously in Cape Town. I was shocked last night when a friend, who’s often voted for the ANC, and never previously considered the DA, said that he’d vote for the DA this time, mainly because he believes they’d do a better job managing the power crisis. The ANC city council must be fuming, and helpless, because they’re not responsible for the mess. However, the ANC is seen as a monolithic organisation, thanks in part to the greater centralisation they’ve been trying to achieve, and the notion that the ANC is responsible is being accepted by many in Cape Town. I was just thinking how pleasing it was that none of the opposition political parties had criticised the ANC local council for the crisis, as they’ve really had nothing to do with it. However, it didn’t surprise me shortly after that to see that the DA has tried to take advantage, and vocally blamed Lindiwe Hendricks, the national ANC, and by implication the city council. Before the latest round of power cuts, I was expecting a hung council, with neither the ANC nor the DA achieving a majority, and smaller parties, perhaps the ID, holding the balance of power. If the radical shift represented by my friend, a sample of one, as well as the renewed vigour of the core DA support, is anything to go by, the DA has a real chance of seizing power.