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Eskom

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DCTrader
Super Contributor
That's like asking if a baker's business is going to fly cos he doesn't have any electricity to bake bread...
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Tango
Super Contributor
When the lights go out the copper is stolen... some areas they need to leave the current flowing all day and night to prevent cable theft. Apparently the copper thieves are now using the eskom blackout schedule to help them with their copper-shopping.
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JDT
Regular Contributor
So short copper - we'll soon have a surplus... LOL
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Project_Directo
Super Contributor
If anyone else fell off the sofa last night, as i did reading Mr Bullards piece, please come forward, the man couldnt possibly have been more bullseye, could he,lol
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Not applicable
That was a stupid statement. The SA growth is only the average of the world. Countries in the developing world have grown more than SOUTH AFRICA.
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Project_Directo
Super Contributor
I am having this framed and mounted in my Bar,lol Common Sense 101, multiple choice examination question 1. You are a political party that has just come to power in a country's first democratic election. The previous government only provided utilities for around 7 million people out of a population of around 43 million. The supply of water and electricity to everyone is one of your core manifesto promises. Will you require A) more power stations B) fewer power stations C) don't know D) a kickback to get me interested? A fairly simple question and in case you're still puzzling over the answer, it is A. The answer the knuckleheads at the ANC gave was B, which is why we are looking increasingly like Zimbabwe at the moment. Instead of building more power stations they mothballed existing ones, sent their buddies in to run Eskom and got rid of what they called the "greybeards", a racist term for elderly Afrikaner men who knew what they were doing. At the end of the year the new executives looked at the balance sheet, found it contained money and awarded themselves handsome bonuses for doing bugger all. The number of Eskom's employees has, according to newspaper reports, halved in the past 15 years and the country's electricity supplier has belatedly admitted that it is woefully short of the skills to provide the country with power for the next eight years. All in all it's a dog's breakfast, but have any politicians taken the slightest bit of interest over the past few weeks? On the contrary, none of them have been available for comment, including our very own Thunderbolt Kid, Alec (it must be sabotage) Erwin. The only comment I have heard is that nobody in the government expected the economy to be so buoyant. That's the problem when you get a bunch of commies running what is essentially a capitalist economy. As worshippers at the shrine of mediocrity, commies like to control the means of production and history suggests that whenever this has happened they screw things up spectacularly through a mixture of bad planning and inefficiency. If the ANC had controlled the means of production back in 1994 we certainly wouldn't have needed more electricity. Anyway, better late than never, as I'm sure my mate Blade Nzimande would agree. We certainly shouldn't be blaming Eskom for our woes. They have been open about our problems and have been willing to appear on radio talk shows to answer difficult questions from irate members of the public. Which is more than can be said for members of our lame-duck government, who have been an absolute disgrace during this national emergency. In China they would be shot, in Japan they would commit suicide after offering a humble apology and in Europe they would be hounded out of office, but in South Africa they will just shrug and blame the media for focusing on the negatives. The obvious question is, what about the 2010 World Cup? Eskom themselves have said that we won't have enough power for the next eight years. So even if we get the stadiums built on time (which seems increasingly unlikely), will we be able to provide electricity to them without inconveniencing the rest of the country's citizens? Isn't it about time we salvaged what shred of integrity we may still have left and told Fifa that we are just too Third World to host the 2010 World Cup?
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topgun
Super Contributor
Given the ambiguous responses from the cabinet and Eskom re: the electricity supply crisis, it is still not clear what has actually transpired at this once proud utility, but years of mismanagement and weak leadership certainly came to a head in Friday's near collapse of the national electricity grid. While the truth will eventually surface, the country is being kept in the dark (quite literally). Poor maintenance and planning, a skills deficit, inadequate coal supplies and the stress on existing capacity probably all played some role in the shutdown. At the moment, no guarantees can be given as to when normal supplies will resume - a sad state of affairs indeed. Eskom's operational difficulties will almost certainly rollover into a credit downgrade which will impact on future funding costs. The ANC's ruinous rule is in fact starting to manifest on many fronts as evidenced in the destruction of once august development bodies such as the IDC and the Landbank. The imposition of Chancellor House (an ANC front company) as the BEE partner of Siemens and Mitshubishi in the recently awarded generator tenders actually reflects how far the rot has spread. The phantom state is becoming a reality as service levels keep on deteriorating and taxpayers come to expect ever less from the state. Unfortunately, many of us frogs still don't realise that the water has started boiling.
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org
Super Contributor
Is it co-incidence that all mines stop at the time?Why now, suddenly, the cuts were going for quite a while.A few large hydro-electric stations on the Orange River can solve it, like at the Augrabies falls.rense.com
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