It's a criminal gang,' announced Jeff
Radebe, the African National Congress (ANC) minister of public enterprises,
at a December (2001) press conference. He was blasting activists of the
Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) for their 'Operation Khanyisa!'--reconnect
the power! -- campaign.
Over six months, more than 3,000 families had their electricity supplies
illegally switched back on, after being left in darkness when they couldn't
afford to pay their enormous monthly bills. SECC volunteers risk electrification
to do the work, and charge their neighbors nothing for the service.
Radebe, ironically, is a leading member of the SA Communist Party. In
May 1999, when Thabo Mbeki was elected president, Radebe was mandated
to privatise and commercialise Pretoria's largest parastatal companies.
The Soweto confrontation was not his first brush with activists who brand
him a sell-out. In August, he used similar language to scorn the 2-million
member Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which embarked
on a two-day national strike against the planned privatisation of electricity,
telecommunications and transport. Mbeki and Radebe were furious because
the strike distracted attention from the United Nations World Conference
Against Racism, which opened in the South African port city of Durban
the following day.
The most important South African parastatal, and the fourth largest non-petroleum
power company in the world, is the Electricity Supply Commission--still
known by its Afrikaans acronym, Eskom. It proudly claims to be one of
the New South Africa's success stories, having provided electricity to
more than 300,000 households each year. Yet many tens of thousands cannot
afford the full-cost-recovery policy that Pretoria's minerals and energy
ministry adopted in 1998.
The neoliberal policy of cutting those who cannot afford their bills was
especially unfortunate, because virtually all black South Africans were
denied Eskom's services until the early 1980s due to apartheid racism.
Even $100 million worth of World Bank loans to Pretoria for expanding
Eskom's grid between 1951 and 1966 explicitly left out all black neighborhoods,
and is one reason that local activists demand reparations from the Bank.
The townships were, as a result, perpetually filthy because of coal and
wood soot. In spite of the limited success of the roll-out, Eskom has
become an even bigger target of dissent. Having fired more than 40,000
of its 85,000 workers
during the early 1990s, thanks to mechanisation and overcapacity, the
utility tried to outsource and corporatise several key operations in recent
years, drawing the ire of workers. The metalworkers and mineworkers unions
have been told that while electricity generation rights will be sold,
Eskom's transmission and distribution will remain state-owned. The South
African cabinet is expected to approve the restructuring programme in
February. But unions remain worried
that further commercialisation will kill yet more employment, in an economy
that has lost more than a million formal sector jobs since the early 1990s.
Moreover, Eskom gets sustained heat from environmentalists who complain
that its massive coal-burning plants still do not have enough sulphur-scrubbing
equipment. Alternative renewable energy investments, especially given
the country's abundant solar and wind power, have been negligible, compared
to the tens of millions of dollars Eskom is spending to develop a prototype
pebble-bed nuclear reactor, alongside a British partner which has teetered
on the edge of bankruptcy.
The South African utility also relies upon controversial hydropower from
Mozambique's huge Cahorra Bassa Dam, whose Portuguese operators claimed
in early January that the $0.003 per kiloWatt hour that Eskom was paying
represented price extortion (Sowetans pay nearly ten times that amount
for each retail kWh). Because the transmission lines from the dam go through
South Africa's eastern province before returning to the Mozambican capital
of Maputo, the huge hydroelectricity consumption of that city's Mozal
aluminium furnace comes from Eskom. Mozambique must buy the processed
electricity back, in US$
(having sold it to South Africa in the local SA currency, rands). The
price is far in excess of what it would pay if it received electricity
direct from Cahorra Bassa, and didn't have to rely on geographic circumstances
forged during the early 1970s colonial period when Portugal and Pretoria
collaborated to keep blacks out of power. As a result, Mozambique is considering
adding two more dams below Cahorra Bassa on the Zambezi River, which environmentalists
are also protesting.
Indeed, it is the residual aura of apartheid-era power that so many South
African consumers object to. The most prominent critic is Trevor Ngwane,
who was formerly an ANC councillor for Soweto, until the ruling party
expelled him
in 1999 for opposing Johannesburg's privatisation strategy. Says Ngwane,
'We believe that the drive to privatise--by milking more from the poor--seemed
to instill in Eskom the most anti-social, anti-environmental strategies.
We also believe that the tide has turned, internationally, against privatisation.
"Renationalisation" is now a popular sentiment.'
Ngwane has been central to not only the SECC's success, but to a provincial
and national Anti-Privatisation Forum that will serve as the main activist
hosts for protesters at the upcoming Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable
Development. Known as 'Rio+10,' the August 26 - September 4 conference
will be the world's largest-ever conference, with 193 heads of state and
63,000 delegates expected.
Nearby, people will still be without electricity. Soweto, the 2-million
resident township outside Johannesburg, will always be known for its Spirit
of '76' when 1,000 students protesting Afrikaans-language education were
killed in the 1976 uprising, which radicalised a generation of anti-apartheid
activists. In December,
Radebe and an allied community network, the SA National Civic Organisation,
ventured to the historic Orlando Hall to try to persuade residents that
they should put their Eskom payment boycott behind them, and repay half
their arrears plus make regular payments.
Ngwane says that Operation Khanyisa worked, for last October, Eskom was
sufficiently intimidated that it announced it would no longer disconnect
those who couldn't pay: 'People's Power was responsible for Eskom's U-turn.
We mobilised tens of thousands of Sowetans in active protests over the
past year. We established professional and intellectual credibility for
our critique of Eskom,
even collaborating on a major Wits University study. We demonstrated at
the houses of the mayor, Amos Masondo, and local councillors, and in the
spirit of non-violent civil disobedience, we went so far as to disconnect
the electricity supplies of the mayor and councillors to give them a taste
of their own medicine.'
But having been branded 'criminals,' Ngwane expects tough ANC repression
prior to the potentially embarrassing United Nations meeting. After Eskom
partially
caved, the SECC were featured last November as popular heroes on the front
page of the Washington Post and on CNN international television news,
as well as in the South African media. That, in turn, irritated Radebe,
Eskom and the neoliberal power-block in Pretoria. Eskom's Jacob Maroga
told the Post that 'There are clearly customers who don't have the capacity
to pay. But there isalso this culture of nonpayment in Soweto where customers
can afford to pay but they prioritise other consumptive spending. We need
to deal with that.'
‘Nonsense,' says Ngwane, 'The people who can't pay the high costs
of electricity genuinely can't afford to, and Eskom's billing is so
erratic that no one really trusts the company to tell them what is owed.'
He ridicules the ANC for having promised a lifeline amount of free electricity
in the 2000 municipal elections, where Ngwane failed to win a council
seat running as an independent.
'We are lucky, as South Africa's social movements, to have Rio+10 here in August this year,' he says, promising that a similar humiliation to the Durban Anti-Racism conference awaits the government, if they continue privatising and cutting services.
But Pretoria watches warily. According to a report in Business Day newspaper last August, Part of the [ANC] strategy--championed by trade And industry minister Alec Erwin, transport minister Dullah Omar and Public enterprises minister Jeff Radebe--was to seek to caution Cosatu members against possible hijacking of their strike by outside elements such as those protesting at World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings.'
Ngwane was featured in an April 2000 film popular amongst critics of globalisation--'Two Trevors go to Washington'--where he led street protests against the Bretton Woods Institutions' spring meetings, which simultaneously were presided over by that year's chair of the IMF/WB Board of Governors, the conservative South African finance minister Trevor Manuel.
The dreadlocked Soweto activist smiles. 'Radebe's threats are an attempt
at divide-and-rule. He is trying to isolate our organisation, and to neutralise
Cosatu
so as to break the unity of the community and unions. But the boycott
of Eskom will continue.'