HEAVEN knows what our leaders read, but it certainly is not anything that proves the link between access to the clean power of electricity and human welfare. If they did, they would not have allowed the present sorry state of affairs to develop to crisis point.
The International Energy Agency that studies such links is just one think tank whose publications should be required bedside reading, especially by those who have run Eskom as a job creation project rather than a public utility.
If our resident socialists paused to think while clamouring for equality, they would also find that the link between access to electricity and human economic development is a slam-dunk case. It is obvious to all but purblind ideologues. Education levels and longevity are also inextricably linked to electricity access.
The best example, outside the old Soviet Union where the price paid was not greater freedom but less, is the US in the 1930s when President Franklin D Roosevelt signed into law the Rural Electrification Act in 1936. Before 1936, a mere 10 percent of people in the US living outside the cities had electricity. Many lived in poorly heated homes (in the central and northern states snow blizzards are regular events).
Without electricity they could not store food in summer, children did their homework by candlelight or paraffin lamps and farmers could not modernise. It was a situation familiar to our own rural citizens.
Of course, being rugged individualists, rural North Americans clubbed together to install their own district power stations, but the cost of doing so was prohibitive for most. That was where the Rural Electrification Act came to the rescue with low cost loans. By 1950, virtually every farm in the US had electricity. It was a phenomenal success.
It had taken 11 years (half the time our new Eskom managers have been in the saddle) if one excludes the war years when priorities were obviously different.
What is so remarkable about this improvement in the lives of ordinary people is not that it took the US government to provide cheap loans. It was not a case of the government doing the job, it merely facilitated individual effort. If civil servants had been tasked with doing the job, it is a safe bet that rural North Americans would have still been waiting in 1950.
Access to electricity dramatically improved everything: child mortality dropped spectacularly, educational attainment soared, farming efficiency rose. So great were the positive changes that the US National Academy of Engineering called electrification the “most significant engineering achievement” of the 20th century. The academy is a non-profit organisation.
All these benefits of generally available electricity should come under the heading of common sense, so it is remarkable that those in charge have failed to see it these past 20 years. Providing electricity is not a job creation project. It should be the bedrock of all policies that aim to create a better life for all.
While this example may seem irrelevant to some because the US – even in the 1930s – was a developed economy, a survey of 38 countries ties electricity availability firmly to economic and social development. It is an opinion the UN shares.
By listening to the siren song of green advocates of wind and solar power, and its risible carbon dioxide scares, made louder by its own mismanagement, Eskom is now pushing for even higher electricity prices.
Somewhere in the last two decades, Eskom and its masters seem to have lost the plot. History tells us that this will prove to be one of the greatest mistakes a developing country can make. It makes our present electricity crisis all the more appalling. Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant.
The International Energy Agency that studies such links is just one think tank whose publications should be required bedside reading, especially by those who have run Eskom as a job creation project rather than a public utility.
If our resident socialists paused to think while clamouring for equality, they would also find that the link between access to electricity and human economic development is a slam-dunk case. It is obvious to all but purblind ideologues. Education levels and longevity are also inextricably linked to electricity access.
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| A poster for The Star newspaper on November 3. Eskom says the power supply remains strained. Photo: Bloomberg |
Without electricity they could not store food in summer, children did their homework by candlelight or paraffin lamps and farmers could not modernise. It was a situation familiar to our own rural citizens.
Of course, being rugged individualists, rural North Americans clubbed together to install their own district power stations, but the cost of doing so was prohibitive for most. That was where the Rural Electrification Act came to the rescue with low cost loans. By 1950, virtually every farm in the US had electricity. It was a phenomenal success.
It had taken 11 years (half the time our new Eskom managers have been in the saddle) if one excludes the war years when priorities were obviously different.
What is so remarkable about this improvement in the lives of ordinary people is not that it took the US government to provide cheap loans. It was not a case of the government doing the job, it merely facilitated individual effort. If civil servants had been tasked with doing the job, it is a safe bet that rural North Americans would have still been waiting in 1950.
Access to electricity dramatically improved everything: child mortality dropped spectacularly, educational attainment soared, farming efficiency rose. So great were the positive changes that the US National Academy of Engineering called electrification the “most significant engineering achievement” of the 20th century. The academy is a non-profit organisation.
All these benefits of generally available electricity should come under the heading of common sense, so it is remarkable that those in charge have failed to see it these past 20 years. Providing electricity is not a job creation project. It should be the bedrock of all policies that aim to create a better life for all.
While this example may seem irrelevant to some because the US – even in the 1930s – was a developed economy, a survey of 38 countries ties electricity availability firmly to economic and social development. It is an opinion the UN shares.
By listening to the siren song of green advocates of wind and solar power, and its risible carbon dioxide scares, made louder by its own mismanagement, Eskom is now pushing for even higher electricity prices.
Somewhere in the last two decades, Eskom and its masters seem to have lost the plot. History tells us that this will prove to be one of the greatest mistakes a developing country can make. It makes our present electricity crisis all the more appalling. Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant.
