Let’s make a power plan for all of us, while we still can

Solar energy is hampered by the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the photovoltaic cells. File Photo: IOL

AND so, like the hint of a Highveld thunderstorm, the latest threat of load shedding has been and gone. There will be other scares before the year is out. We will moan again - and then we will either make a plan or get over ourselves.

For many, making a plan means buying a generator or investing in solar panels or getting an inverter. They’re expensive solutions, but the fact that the batteries are being stolen with increasing regularity from our cellphone towers - apparently for direct export to Zimbabwe - shows us that the green economy is upon us, whether we like it or not.

In fact, Hiten Parmer, the director of uYilo, the government-sponsored think tank and lab at the Nelson Mandela University looking specifically at electro-mobility, reckons the Eskom crisis has been a blessing in disguise because it’s started the “de-carbonisation of the national grid”. If it sounds like a euphemism for people making a plan, you’re probably right.

Electric vehicles have more of a chance in this country, not because we want to save the economy, but because they’re effectively batteries on wheels that you can charge up at home and then drive around in town to your heart’s content for about three days between charges - and the tech is getting better and cheaper.

It’s the South African way: when things don’t work, the haves merely contract out; whether Panyaza Lesufi or Aaron Motsoaledi like it or not. Education? Health? Security? Go private.

Many better off households in badly run municipalities have put in boreholes and JoJo tanks - or both. Generators are no longer a luxury, but an essential - for those who can afford them.

What of our politics? We live in an era of increasing expedience and opportunism by those we choose to represent us - to say nothing of a growing lack of accountability -where coalitions with polar opposite political bedmates trump principles for the opportunity to get a seat at the table or cling to power.

The net result is almost always the same; recriminations as reality sours the brief rush of the honeymoon as the commentariat gnash their teeth and rend their hair, but the electorate will just quietly make a plan.

One of the most worrying aspects of last year’s general election was the growing apathy among voters only 25 years into South Africa’s democratic liberation - after centuries where the majority were denied the vote - and especially among first-time voters, born frees, who couldn’t even have been bothered to register on the voters roll.

Ultimately, are we are going to lose interest in our politics - as we “make a plan”?

But what happens when we can no longer make a plan?

Emigration?

Increasing numbers of those who qualify are doing just that, belying the nationalists’ claim that it’s just scared recalcitrant racists.

For the rest; for the have-nots regardless of their hue who can’t opt out, who can’t leave - and whose hopes have been dashed. That’s called revolution - and not the thieving Teletubbies in red version either.

We need to make a plan - for all of us - while we still can.

* Ritchie is a journalist and a former newspaper editor.

** The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of Independent Media