South Africa

- First up is a must read by Andrew Kenny on South Africa's energy crises. A very interesting piece that raises a lot of questions about just what the Department of Mineral and Energy affairs has being doing for the past 10 years. There definitely appears to be a strong case for official departmental incompetence on this one, what with the fact that the current energy problems were completely predictable -

The outstanding feature of the present electricity crisis is that it was so easy to avoid. South Africa has now run out of generating capacity and it was entirely predictable at least ten years ago that it would do so. Three recent power failures in the Western Cape are a foretaste of what is to come over the whole country. This is much more serious than the frequent blackouts in Johannesburg caused by the poor state of repair of City Power's distribution network. We now face years of electricity cuts, which will harm our economy....

 

In the democratic era, the yearly increase in electricity consumption has averaged just over 3%. A projection in 1994 of this modest increase would have shown us running out of capacity now, which is exactly what has happened. Our generating capacity is about 36 500 MWe (megawatts electrical). In 2004, peak demand was 34 200. This gives a reserve margin of 6%. A healthy electricity grid has a reserve margin of about 15% to allow for planned maintenance and for unplanned shut-downs, which happen all the time. Both the national generation and transmission systems are now chronically overloaded, so that if a generating unit shuts down it knocks the whole grid and can cause blackouts.

 

- With Jacob Zuma's presidentail ambitions imploding, the race to succeed Mbeki is fierce as ever. The latest two names being bandied about are that of Mbhazima Shilowa, Premier of Gauteng and ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe, with Shilowa being the "business" candidate of choice. 

- Nice little media brief by Lizette Rabe, who is head of the postgraduate Department of Journalism at the University of Stellenbosch. She argues (correctly in my opinion) that "an individual's rights were placed above that of the public in the decision to exclude the media from the court appearance of ex-president Jacob Zuma earlier this week." Motivating this statement she referred to :

In a case such as this one, the public's right to know must surely weigh heavier than that of an individual - no matter who he or she is. Take these facts into account: the person accused of an alleged rape is the same person who:

 

• used to be in the second highest office of our country,
  
• at the time of writing still is the deputy president of the ruling party "in name" (whatever that may mean),
  
• is the leader of a moral regeneration movement,
  
• has already drawn unhealthy attention to himself thanks to alleged corruption,
  
• was "relieved" of his position as deputy president of the country exactly because of the court's findings in his benefactor's case and the consequent case against him,
  
• stands accused of a rape in a time when there is specific focus on crimes against women thanks to the Sixteen Days campaign,
  
• should be a leader in the struggle against especially this type of violence, seeing that we are a "world leader" in the category violence against women, leading to what has been described as gendercide.