De Ruyter’s been gone a few days – why is there still load shedding?

You’d think, given the furiousness of his detractors, Andre de Ruyter’s departure from Eskom was the key to fixing our energy situation. Well that and the urgency of creating a new ministry that’s urgent to create but not that urgent to fill. Yet here were are, still in darkness, and the dude is gone. As they would say at the end of 1930s cinema, well whadaknow ‘bout that.

Load shedding was with us many CEOs ago and will likely be with us after. De Ruyter didn’t fix load shedding. He admitted that himself and the evidence is pretty plain but he’s not the common denominator in this. So if you’re looking to the state and saying, “good job, you got rid of the failure” you’re bound to be disappointed at the next couple of failures.

There’s a reason we don’t put kids in the street, give them books in Spanish, send a teacher to them once a month and expect them to get straight ‘A’s. If you create a system conducive to failure, you’re going to get failure.

And South Africa is not one from shying away from trying to fix the system; we’ve got employment laws to try rectify the past, laws to fund political parties so that there can be access to all views and even laws that compel us to pay for the education of other peoples’ children. It should not be that difficult to apply some philosophical consistence and understand that the ecosystem of and around Eskom is not conducive to success.

Of course, I wish De Ruyter had done more to fix that system. Maybe he didn’t have it in him. Maybe nobody does. Edward Kieswetter doesn’t even want to try and that’s pretty telling of the expectations.

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So let’s not pretend like the next person is going to keep the lights on because it’s never been the CEO that exclusively caused the problem. If that were the case, the lights should be on again and only have gone out some four years ago.

Once Fikile Mbalula stops bashing the dude and goes back to his promise of fixing our railways, the dust may settle enough to take a look at the accusations. Once Gwede Mantashe does his job and doesn’t require a whole additional ministry, we can have more of an expectation of parastatal CEOs. Once the country gets off the grey list, we may be able to engage better with our international partners on energy.

Yes, De Ruyter didn’t give us everything that we wanted. Yes, we deserve far better outcomes. No, replacing him will not be enough to solve the issues we face.

So, let’s stop the lunacy of thinking that victory is around the corner because the man is out of a job. If you stop and think just a little bit, he may be out of a job but the other 60 million of us are still out of electricity.

Even Mantashe is saying that the private interventions being made are still not enough to fix the problem so one can’t help but look around and think, “well, ummm, sooo what now?”

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If you want to tell me that De Ruyter smashed the system so bad that we’ll have load shedding into the future, take a moment and think where we inherited it from. If you want to tell me that whoever the new dude is, is actually going to fix it, I’ll take whatever odds you’re offering. If you want to tell me that I’m defending De Ruyter and should shut up, I’m really not. I just want my electricity to be on and I don’t see that happening regardless of who the CEO is.

But you know what the best part about all this is? While you’re having your consequence-less bickering on Twitter in front of your 98 non-influential followers, AfriForum is building a network of electrical generation facilities… and in a few years, you’ll be paying whatever the private sector wants for electricity because your government just blamed the one dude yet still couldn’t keep the lights on.

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