The rise and fall of Eskom - and how to fix it now

Cape Town - Eskom is seldom out of the news these days and always in it for the wrong reasons. South Africa’s precarious electricity supply, for which Eskom is almost entirely responsible, presents a national crisis.

The desperate shortage of electricity is crippling our economy. Because of inadequate generation capacity, our existing power stations, now creaking with age and wear, are being run into the ground and failing more and more often.

Their availability – ability to produce power at any moment – is dropping dangerously. The new power stations are years behind schedule. Load shedding and blackouts threaten us every month. To explain these problems and to solve them, there is a clamour from our public commentators and ‘experts’, some of it sensible, most silly. This is an attempt to show what went wrong and how it can be remedied.