...kindly turn off the lights.
The main problem is that the developmental state model can succeed only if it is driven by a highly efficient state bureaucracy staffed by the nation's brightest and best. That's why it can be so spectacularly successful in a country like Singapore, which has perhaps the world's highest skills level where the economic and business savvy of its ministers and top civil servants is every bit as high as those in the private sector.
As the Eskom debacle has demonstrated, we don't have that not by a long shot.
Indeed, I don't recall any other event in recent history that has so shaken the confidence of ordinary South Africans in the future of this country as the incompetence revealed by the breakdown of our largest and most important state corporation.
Alistair Sparks | 'Now is the time to be realistic'
Like Alison Tilley, the naked racism surrounding Eskom's 'catastrophic cock-up' leaves me loath to comment on South Africa's descent into perpetual darkness. For that is where we are and few realise the severity of our predicament.
No matter that power outages are common in California, New Zealand or Brazil — load shedding in Pakistan during 2007 saw long-suffering villagers close the Pak-Afghan highway. As Sparks's commentary suggests, we're closer to Zim, Kenya and Pakistan than we in the know care to admit and those in the dark dare face.
Reality is a hard dollar and the Rand is taking more than a beating right now. What pisses me off is the insouciance with which the media and business continue to swan into a bleak future. Despite finding massive new coal deposits, resources are scarce and The Global War on The Poor gains momentum and viciousness.
The worldwide use of state-sanctioned terror by those wielding the looted capital of others' economies gives meaning to war criminal Donald Rumsfeld's promise of a Long War.
As our bread and milk producers are slapped on the wrist for decades of price fixing, we need to realise we've not yet reached the end of the beginning. And we're already taking strain. Get ready for the Long Haul.
As for Eskom? Eish!
