Spare a thought for our friends in South Africa where the most advanced economy in Africa has quietly notched up 200 days of load shedding in 2022 and things are about to get worse. They have had power shortages for the last 15 years, but nothing like this. The country was at level six load shedding last week in a system where level 8 is the worst. Two thirds of the customers are losing power for 6 to 8 long hours a day. It’s wreaking havoc with small business. How is a bakery supposed to bake?
This is a sorry tale of a civilization unraveling on every edge. On December 16, the grid shifted from Stage Four to Six after eight (8!) power generating units “broke” down in one night. After that, the Army was called in to protect the coal plants from sabotage, theft and vandalism.
There is corruption at every level. The poor were stealing electricity with hot-wired connections, while the middle income rent-seekers were sabotaging infrastructure so they could be paid more to fix the damage. At the high income end, auditors are finding fraud, while evidence is being set on fire. International courts are bagging business-men for bribery and just weeks ago slapped a $315m fine on one caught doing deals with a high ranking Eskom executive. “These are not victimless crimes!”
As if that isn’t enough, there are rumours that the best coal is being shipped to Europe while low grade material is slipped into the local supplies, which adds to the maintenance woes.
This convoy of coal trucks is apparently en route to Richards Bay for export to Europe. Rumour has it that high grade coal, intended for Eskom power stations, is being exported after being illegally swopped for low grade coal! A heist of ‘Steinhoff’ magnitude in plain sight? đ. pic.twitter.com/cWz1ftUJ5S
â LeafIS (@UbuntuReg) December 16, 2022
Poignantly, one commenter claims the coal is being sent in these long lines of trucks because the rail lines are on the verge of collapse…
In the next quarter Eskom lose one nuclear plant turbine to maintenance as well, and are preparing for a potential “level 8” scenario where the blackouts roll on for 12-14 unbelievable hours a day. There are “safety tips” below on living through this dystopia which include keeping the car fully fueled, not driving alone, and watching out for smash and grab crimes at traffic lights. Apparently, it’s best to watch the daily blackout schedules so you can make plans to get home before the lights go out…
Crime, of course, is rampant when the lights go out, showing that coal not only provides power, but it keeps people safe, reduces crime, and to some extent keeps civilization on the rails.
The Eskom grid has a theoretical 45,000 MW of generation capacity but is struggling to provide an operational demand of 25,000MW. They need an extra 6,000MW of solid power but are paying $2 billion for some 1,700MW of unreliable wind and solar power which will sit there like a rock more than half the time.
Fifty years ago, South Africa could build a whole coal power plant in just four years. Could we even do that now?
Arnot Coal Power Station South Africa built in four years and finished in 1975. (2230MW)
Call in the army:
South Africa deploys army to guard power plants
December 18, 2022, Africa News
The South African presidency announced on Saturday the deployment of the military to guard the country’s electricity plants. Blackouts have become routine in Africa’s most industrialised nation but further cuts imposed recently by state-owned company Eskom have generated anger.
According to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman, the move was “in response to the growing threat of sabotage, theft, vandalism and corruption” at coal and diesel-powered plants.
Life in the darkness:
These are the contingency plans in place for Stage 8 electricity load shedding throughout the country
Stage 8 electricity load shedding might soon be the reality for South Africans as energy analysts say we are moving closer to the total grid shutdown.
âWe are certainly moving closer to a stage 8 total grid meltdown, the chances are more than 70%. And we will see level 6 load shedding before the end of the year,â said energy analyst Ted Blom. Stage 8 load shedding entails pulling 8 000MW from the grid. What this means for us is we will be without electricity for 12-14 hours a day.
Safety tips during periods of load-shedding from the City of Cape Town:
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- Make sure you are familiar with your areaâs schedule so you do not arrive home in darkness
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- Where intersections are affected, be vigilant for opportunistic crimes like smash and grab incidents
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- Do not drive alone, if possible, especially after dark
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- Ensure batteries for automated gates, garage doors and security systems are in good working order and store temporary lighting such as battery-powered torches, gas lamps and candles in places where they will be easy to find in the dark.
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- Make sure your vehicle always has fuel in the tank as most petrol stations are unable to pump fuel during power outages.
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- Traffic lights that are out and unmanned, should be treated as four-way stops at intersections.
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- Safety around the home: ensure all non-essential appliances are switched off before load-shedding starts. Take extra care when using open flames or other heat sources for cooking or lighting. Ensure gates, windows and doors are secured.
Everyone is on the take:
Eskom CEO quits: Why finding a new head for South Africaâs struggling power utility wonât end the blackouts
By Shubham Srivastava, DowntoEarth, Dec 21.
My second reason for asserting that De Ruyter wouldnât have to think for long about his decision is that Eskom has lost control of its power stations to criminal elements and ârent-seekersâ, who engage in purposeful malfunction and sabotage to earn higher maintenance and other fees from the utility. Drain plugs removed from motor housings, cables cut, theft of coal and diesel, death threats against station managers, are all examples from a long list of cases which are awaiting police investigation.
Moreover, law enforcement is doing little to control the crime. There have been no convictions.
The country is now suffering regular rolling blackouts, and must adapt to a routine energy availability factor of 50 per cent to 55 per cent, leaving a generation shortfall of 4 GW to 5 GW. Since only 66 per cent of Eskomâs demand side is subject to power cuts – the national key points which consume 33 per cent of the total demand are untouched by loadshedding – this means 6 to 8 hours per day of no power for the average consumer.
To make everything absurdly worse, there is a Green Integrated Resource Plan of 2019, that seeks to expand the share of renewables in the energy mix to 25% by 2030. As if…
h/t Stephen Neil in Africa
This makes for a Happy New Year.
The USA is trying to get out in front:
Both coasts have seen electrical stations attacked, Washington State and North Carolina.
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Solar and windmills are really exposed to weather extremes. Six foot of snow on solar panels tends to have an impact.
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Sending solar panels and windmills to South Africa is a bit like throwing stones to a person who is drowning .
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EU permitted the German government to add EUR29bn to “renewable” subsidies in Germany.
The reason EU had to approve this is because government subsidies usually give national industries an unfair competitive advantage and are discouraged in the EU. Clearly EU recognise that subsidising “renewables” is not a competitive advantage.
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Nelson Mandela would despair at the State of a Nation that he suffered 27 years in prison for!
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Mandela was in jail for complicity in many murders and 156 acts of terrorism. Nevertheless, he was jailed in comfortable conditions and could communicate with his followers. He was also offered release on many occaasions, the only condition being that he had to renounce terrorism in his pursuit of legitimate political reforms but he refused. During his jail time he also amassed a considerable amount of money. He was no angel.
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Penguinite I endorse what David has written and also Mandela’s wife Winnie was a vile butcher as well.
She specialised in the tyre necklace torture and this terrible practice was a shocking way to die.
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Winne gave an entirely new meaning to “necklace” as part of that endeavour.
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Remember poor Stompey, necklaced on Winnies orders
A vile individual, yet, as usual, portrayed as saintly by much of the press…
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It is not currently PC to say it, but,âŚ
Mandella can be seen to be the initiator of much of what has happeneed to S Africa, maybe not directly or intentionally, but his force of change to hand the governance to the local indigenous population has seen the society spiral to the mess that is is and the even worse that will come soon.
I believe Mandella was an intellegent man with an idealistic vision of a harmonious society.
..but he was also a fool , and that did not happen !
A classic case of âout of the frying pan ( Apartheid) âŚ.and into the fire ( Indigenous rule)
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The Biden Maladministration is in on it too.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/12/18/biden-announces-8-billion-will-go-to-south-africa-to-shut-down-coal-plants/
(My emphasis.)
SEE LINK FOR REST
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Fortunately, only a very small amount of that $8B will get to where Biden wants it to.
But the coal plants will die anyway. đ
Poor SA, heading back to where it was before European occupation in 1650 !
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ooops…. that smilie was meant to be ! đ
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When the communists finally take over South Africa many of the criminal elements will either be employed as secret service or police. The rest will be going to forced labor an will ruefully remember the good old days when the whites were in charge.
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“When the communists finally take over South Africa many of the criminal elements will either be employed as secret service or police.”
They already have and they already are.. It was seen as likely that RSA would end up where it is when I left in the early ’80s. You can’t expect tribal countries to run a democracy, as seen in all of Africa.
The West has enough corruption with politicians using insider knowledge to get rich, then their families getting Govt contracts, and after that their mates getting rich from what’s left. That’s after 400years of practice, so democracy is a fail as far as I can see, it divides us into the political class and the sheep to be shorn.
Does a life-long tribal chief or monarch do better? The 50years of South Africa under one Govt party was a stable time of great growth, at least you knew what they were going to do.
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The âwhite ruleâ of the past will be what they blame all their troubles on. Also, few will be old enough or educated enough to appreciate the difference between past and present. Finally, the âwhite ruleâ of today would be little better than that of the past, as can be seen by comparing any current Western govt to what we ourselves had in the past.
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This was supposed to be to Lawrie.
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So what will happen to the money South Africa got promised from the US? Corruption ? Wasted? More windmills and solar panels likely, Iâd say. That makes it corruption and wasted combined. How long before the South African President and his entourage take off to Zimbabwe or such?
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Zimbabwe. What a heaven on earth to escape to. Corruption capital of Africa where life is cheap and security very expensive.
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I’d be surprised if a single windmill gets installed.
The entire $8B will line the pockets of the corrupt.
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Morning Jo,
Now here’s a thought.
Our exports could do with a bit of help.
Let’s export “Blackout Bowen” to South Africa for six months to be their new head of Eskom.
(Some less tactful than me may say six years…better still, Albo & Bandt could pack his bags…LOL.!)
Warm regards, Reformed Warmist of Logan.
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Just like Australia’s Labor Party and what is now the pretend conservative Liberal Party, and the Obama/Biden regimes in the USA, South Africans were handed a fully functional country that is now being systematically and deliberately destroyed to appease Klaus Schwab and his globalists. In South Africa the lack or organisational and management skills doesn’t help either.
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If fascism is the enforcement of authoritarian rule by an enmeshment of government, big business, media, the police and armed forces and bureaucracy, are we now witnessing worldwide fascist rule triggered by Covid and now the “climate catastrophe”?
It seems there is no escape.
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They only win if conservatives and fellow rational thinkers remain silent.
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That is the crux of the matter. Evil flourishes when good men do nothing. We are the good men so what are we doing? I am sure we all spread the good news where and when we can to neighbours, friends and acquaintances. We write to our political representatives. We practice what we preach and laugh at the ridiculous statements of the fools in charge. We challenge statements by people we meet when they extol the virtues of wind or demonise coal with practical facts such as cost and how it affects their pockets. We cannot be on TV but we can influence those around us. I live in the country and most of those on farms and in country towns are not fooled by the idiots in power nor are they convinced by arguments of imminent doom. Affordable power is a premier concern and that is on our side.
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” We are the good men so what are we doing?”
Jo, do we have a plan for another website or somewhere to meet when the Govt shut this one down? I expect it will just vanish one day, become one of the hundreds that the Govt censors out of existence.
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Our voices will not be heard loud and wide enough as long as the corrupt MSM and our corrupt educational systems continue to push this nonsense. I regularly post comments to articles in newspapers and am appalled at the many responses that display a level of ignorance that is virtually impossible to counter – mass formation psychosis has taken over much of the population and no amount of data can move true believers from their position. Here in the US, I doubt that even a mass casualty event directly and indisputably caused by over-reliance on unreliables would convince people of the lunacy that fossil fuels can be replaced by ruinables. Putin and Xi are ROFL at the stupidity of western woke “leaders” as they rush to outdo each other in their race to destroy their economies. They could have no better friend than the MSM.
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A great question for ChatGPT Doctor T!
Is there an escape for South Africa from the ‘Great Reset’?
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I’ll leave it to my technological superiors to ask!
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But as has ALWAYS been the case throughout history, such delusional totalitarianist societies collapse under their own weight.
This time is no different.
The mitigating factor is the degree of public awareness and resistance.
ie choose not to stand up and fight back and “The crash & burn” will be worse than it needed to be.
90
Jo
Re trucking coal –
IIRC the South African railways were electrified way back in sanctions times.
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…and its downhill to the coast!
There were over 200 B-trains in that video from the helicopter, a staggering cost to move coal. Those trucks were meant to be moving food and equipment to customers…
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But the MODERN SA railways have no electrical cables (stolen), no commuter stations (broken up and stolen), few commuter train sets (burned out), no long-distance train sets (abandoned because of lack of maintenance), and in many cases, no railway lines (lifted and sold as scrap). Quite an achievement for 30 years of ANC socialist rule!
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Their cricket team is getting hammered too !
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/south-africa-in-australia-2022-23-1317472/australia-vs-south-africa-2nd-test-1317493/live-cricket-score
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I wonder how many of them have started applying for “refugee status”?
Out of the fir and into the frying pan?
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I wonder how many of them have started applying for “refugee status”?
Out of the fire and into the frying pan?
30
Ouch, Poor SA.. Australia 7/550
Probably declare at or 1/2 hour before tea, leaving a whole session at the SA batsmen with maybe a short session before tea.
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Of course. As all visiting cricket teams do here. Visiting batters struggle with the extra bounce in the wicket here. This game is going exactly as I predicted. Predictably dull, no competition.
20
The problem with the SA railways is extensive theft of copper cable and vandalism including burning of trains “for fun”.
https://youtu.be/aaBgW3QlUZk
https://youtu.be/dXeIcVbaCjI
https://youtu.be/YAJ5rx84FzI
And road travel isn’t safe either due to car jacking etc..
South Africa is rapidly reverting to its pre-European settler state, no doubt as many people, including the Left, want it.
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It will get interesting once the PLA start openly operating inland.
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The first three safety tips for periods of load shedding have nothing to do with power but address the risks of predators those periods bring out. The veneer of civilization is thin everywhere, its just a matter of degree.
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‘ … the risks of predators those periods bring out.’
Very perceptive, we can only imagine the villainy going on in the dark.
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So South Africa is not allowed use its own coal. Same in Australia. Both mineral rich countries are to be reduced to poverty as open cut mines for China which now produces more CO2 than all other countries combined. But you never read that.
Power used to come from the barrel of a gun. Now it comes on electric cables. And in Australia, the people against Australia are demanding that everything is electric, no wood, coal, oil, gas. It’s far easier for politicians to control people with a single switch. In Beijing
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What a mess, but I’m sure our clueless blog donkeys, plus leftie loonies like Albo, Bandt, Andrews , Bowen, Flannery, Gore, Biden, Attenborough etc will be very pleased with Sth Africa’s rapid decline.
I can’t see how this will be turned around for many decades and alas it could mean a nasty dictatorship in the near future.
But China, Russia etc will be very pleased and offer to fix their problems for a considerable return and export of their minerals, coal, gas etc.
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People keep singling out the Labor Party for the mess we are about to enter, but the LNP is equally to blame. It’s the Uniparty on energy policy and has been like that for probably 10 years. Hello, anyone remember Malcolm Turnbull? Bowen is a donkey, but some of the stuff Angus Taylor was doing was just as cretinous.
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One… Hundred… Percent!
The LNP are complicit in this unfolding disaster.
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Exactly, and probably all of us on this site knew that before the election but most would have still voted for the idiots in the Coalition. There really was no choice.
20
The LNP coalition started out ok, but rapidly degenerated in following every leftist policy as long as it kept them in power. Pretty soon, it was clear that it had no actual beliefs, but just wanted power for its own sake. Just like Labor.
40
You can bet China will be after a port giving it access to the South Atlantic and South Indian Oceans.
40
South Africa unravelling; and to think I once considered emigrating there . .
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Sam’s twin nuclear power reactors produce 5%-6% of SA’s electricity.
Given the much higher management and technical skills required for nuclear reactors than are available in SA, and the consequences of bad management, my understanding is that South Africa’s two nuclear power reactors (Koeberg) are managed by imported French technicians and managers.
I would hope the site is secure from terrorists but am not at all confident that it is due to the almost universal dysfunction in both South Africa and the African continent in general.
Given how rapidly SA is degenerating it’s probably best to shut the reactor down, remove the fuel to the US or Europe and render the reactor vessels safe.
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Should be SA’s not Sam’s. Unauthorised spelling change.
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Sorry DM, poor navigation, meant green.
30
A few years ago I met a Sth African family who’d moved to Australia and they told me they couldn’t see a viable future for their young family anymore.
They still had relatives there, but they were also tossing up whether they should emigrate as well. I hope for their sake that they also made the move.
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Sadly, it’s almost impossible for white, educated, ready-to-start-work-immediately SA farmers to come to Australia. Despite brutal treatment, including rapes and murders, Australia refuses to recognise their refugee status. It can only be anti-white racism by Australian authorities.
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And that was the Coalition Govt that made that decision.
90
I worked with an SA guy in the 90s. He mentioned one day what a pleasure it was to be in Australia and be able to take his family on a picnic in the countryside and not have to consider firearms, ammo and escape routes as part of routine preparations.
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Half of South Africans still live below the poverty line and if the energy situation continues then the country will regain sub Saharan status.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/09/29/the-electricity-crisis-in-south-africa-continues-to-brew/
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South Africa has been dominated by exploitation of weaker groups.
I have some knowledge of SA gold mining practice of recent past and the black workers in the mines worked in miserable conditions. Compressed air powered tools were desirable when working 3000m below the surface with rock temperature of 60C; working on Kees due to no head room. The compressed air produced a cooling effect on expansion and delivered oil laden “fresh” air into the cramped working spaces. This has a photo showing conditions:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2552803/Eight-bodies-recovered-fire-rock-fall-Johannesburg-gold-making-South-Africas-worst-accident-2009.html
Average caucasian living in SA during apartied had black housekeepers and nannies. These servants lived in quarters on the property. That was a better life than the near slums that most black people occupied.
The culture has exploitation deeply embeded although now it black people exploiting mostly black people in the country and mostly white financiers in institutions like the IMF and UN exploiting the whole country.
The whole climate scam is UN’s effort to exploit the global community to feather its cosy nest.
I do not hold much hope for South Africa. Maybe I am overly pessimistic. There may be a good leader stepping up that I have no idea about.
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“Average caucasian living in SA during apartied had black housekeepers and nannies. These servants lived in quarters on the property. That was a better life than the near slums that most black people occupied.”
Of course, they are not a welfare state. They were horrified that we paid people to do nothing while not having people to do the time-consuming chores and free the educated people to do more to get the country ahead. I was looked on as weird for not having a char and a garden boy, and people told me it was my duty to employ them or they wouldn’t have a job at all.
When the options were obvious in the rest of Africa, people would take any job. You would get people knocking on the door, house or business, asking ‘Got a job for me Baas?”. Compare that to standing in a crowded dole office in Auckland asking the unemployed if they wanted to work and I couldn’t find anyone who would do plain manual labour!
Rick you are not pessimistic, South Africa has no brilliant, honest, handsome young leaders coming up, they have a future of sliding back down into anarchy and corruption. There was an advanced engineering sector that built cars, trucks, aircraft, helicopters… Things a 3rd world country just can’t manage. Like the railways and the electricity industries, I imagine that no longer exists.
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Things South Africa used to do
Weekend Wings #39: South Africa’s “Franken-Mirages”, Part 1 of 3″
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2011/06/weekend-wings-39-south-africas-franken.html
Mind you Oz used to build Pratt and Witney R 1830 14 cylinder radial engines too – way back in BC
80
and this will be the future of Australia too
180
For South Africa it appears that chaos has risen like an evil Phoenix from the ashes of the old apartheid system. Now, the ratbags are in charge and each want a slice of corruption for themselves. Law and order is finished. Good people have no where to go and are dangerously isolated in their own country.
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Burning coal is bad for the climate.
We were warned back in 1912:
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5
S. Africa needs to get with the plan and get MOAR solar. All those deserts are sitting empty, and the critters will benefit from the shade the panels offer.
/dry humour
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Interesting find from 1912.
10
Perhaps a small truth and recociliation commission is needed. All politicians working in the energy portfolio, ESKOM management and supplier management.
What was your nett wealth 10 years ago, what is it now? Explain tbe difference.
Where does your wealth reside? Why?
80
In other news, Kip’s Ma tells South Africans to burn soybeans for electrical power.
(That’s an Ayn Randish joke, if you don’t get it.)
41
Surely I’m not the only one who notices something here about all of this.
All the Countries getting rid of coal fired power are having trouble with their power grids, and are slowly sinking.
All the Countries constructing new coal fired power are seemingly doing okay with their power grids, well better than those whose grids are crashing anyway.
Tony.
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Exactly, Tony. Iâd be interested to read to what extent the SA problems are being exacerbated by the IPCC and other meddling, such as by the US payments to quit coal.
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According to Joshua Philipp there have been 106 deliberate attacks on US electricity networks this year. The attacks are widespread with no pattern.
Because there was, coincidentally, a drag show at the same time as one of them the investigations seem to be aimed at “right wing domestic terrorists”, not ant1fa.
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Right! Just like all the right-wing nuts who burned my home city of Minneapolis in celebration of George Floyd’s death from fentanyl.
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mmmm a bit like these https://thewashingtonstandard.com/a-list-of-16-major-fires-that-have-occurred-at-key-food-industry-facilities-in-us-since-start-of-2022/
no pattern at all
30
I told the story of what did the South African Magician say to the Fisherman? Answer “Take a cod, any cod”.
I had to explain the joke to the local ex South African now chartered accountant. South Africans pronounce card as cod. đ
30
Same as in Boston.
00
I went to South Africa in the late days of the so called apartheid regime. All was orderly and whilst there were pockets of crime it was contained. The world media shrilly screamed about the terrible injustices that were occurring.
I have travelled there several times since and each time it got worse.
The installation of a kleptocracy by the outside world has done South Africa no favours at all, with a small lot of highly corrupt doing v well, whilst poor Africans come off the worst.
This was all done with the eager support of the UN and others. These same institutions would do the same here and elsewhere in the name of equity and progress. Don’t laugh, if we continue to have govts here that destroy our economy with senseless climate change regulations, poison our childrens minds with completely false concepts of hate like the strange racial theories now being taught, and prefer the advice of proven incompetent bureaucrats to those of people who actually know what they are talking about, such will be our fate here in time also…
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One of the better books I found on South Africa was written by an overseas airline pilot (BOAC/British Airways IIRC) who had been based in South Africa. He brought up the tribal side of things. The book went ack willie so I can’t reference it.
But from Ethiopia to Cape of Good Hope 600 odd years of European meddling has in places changed the dominant tribe but in no way has changed who hates whose guts
31
It sounds like the same socialist leftist loons have done to SA, exactly what their counterparts have done to the socialist led cities in the US.
(Destroy them, crime, corruption, poverty, drug addiction, licentious perversions of every sort, human misery)
10
[…] published JoNova; How low will they go? Europe has been accused receiving stolen shipments of high quality coal from […]
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[…] published JoNova; How low will they go? Europe has been accused receiving stolen shipments of high quality coal from […]
00
South Africa would be one rare place where you actually would be better off with an off-grid system.
20
Not that rare. Try Venezuela or Ukraine.
20
In 1977 the South African Rhodes Scholar RW Johnson published a book critical of the apartheid regime, titled How Long Will South Africa Survive?
In 2015 he published a new book under the old title, this time subtitled The Looming Crisis and critical of the ANC regime. In it he did not major on electric power, but he foresaw the events described above and set them in a wider cultural context.
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They cannot blame anyone but themselves as they had Rhodesia next door as a prime example (as well as almost every other ex-colony in Africa especially former UK ones (I love the story of the Nigerian train engineer) as the others never saw much of a need for putting an effort into their colonies) to warn them of what was coming. But like leftists in the west, they never looked, listened or cared and just believed the usual garbage.
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“South African Energy Contractors Accused of Stealing Coal and Shipping it to Europe”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/12/27/south-african-energy-managers-accused-of-stealing-coal-and-shipping-to-europe/
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Ah, no transponders on the trucks, no drones watching where it goes, no RFID in a fake piece of coal in the load.. Technology will have to improve, although I assume the ANC will not allow it.
The coal-black version of Hunter Biden’s laptop- Everyone knows the politicians are corrupt but it gets ignored..
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I don’t know where the wife got this from-
“By 2019 the number of skilled black South Africans emigrating out of the country had surpassed the number of white emigres.”
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That’s because all of the whites who can AFFORD to leave, have!
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Eskomâs real debt . . . . . is over 75% of South Africaâs total debt.
the wheels have pretty much come off of South Africa, because when you take out the power generation out of the industry, you canât run your plants, you canât run your smelters, you canât run your mines, you canât run your light industrial manufacturing. And so your economy starts to collapse. So, when Eskom goes down, for all practical purposes, the economy goes down in South Africa. And I want people to understand this is not something thatâs going to be solved by renewable energy. (my emphasis)
https://www.biznews.com/energy/2022/10/31/kw-miller-eskom-disaster
Here is a comment on the passenger rail network in South Africa:
Disturbing news about the trains. The Passenger Rail Service of SAâs 2021/2022 annual report reveals that matters are going heavily pear-shaped with the choo-choos. In short: Of the countryâs 590 stations, only 134 are functional, 323 have been completely vandalised and thereâs no word on the state of the other 133; of the 40 train lines, 21 have stopped altogether; of the countryâs 2 228 kilometres of signal cables, some 1 100 kilometres have been stolen; and of the more than 4 000 coaches in its fleet, only 800 are operational and in service.
Passenger numbers have declined dramatically. In 2011, Prasa was handling 522 million passenger trips a year; in the past financial year, it managed just 17 million â a 97 per cent drop.
No one is safe anymore – Andrew Donaldson
https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/noone-is-safe-anymore
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How very interesting Michael. And depressing.
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[…] published JoNova; How low will they go? Europe has been accused receiving stolen shipments of high quality coal from […]
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I had to double check this wasnât a story on the UK! đđ
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Those who love history and how it gives us insight into scientific and engineering endeavours would do well to read A Biography of H J van der Bijl by Alice Jacobs (1948). A hundred years ago he was invited by General Smuts to set set up a reliable and affordable supply of electricity in South Africa and and set up a foundation for industrial development of the country. Had H J van der Bijl been alive today he would have totally rejected the climate alarmist narrative and all the socialist folly. This book deserves to be republished with a lengthy foreword drawing lessons for today.
This book can be found online and is less than 180 pages.
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[…] published JoNova; How low will they go? Europe has been accused receiving stolen shipments of high quality coal from […]
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South Africa is just like Zimbabwe only 20 years behind.
This is not racist but when the last white Prime Minister Ian Smith was kicked out Rhodesia as it was then it went down the gurgler fast.
Exactly the same is happening in South Africa.
As one black said to me personally when I was in Zimbabwe
years ago âwhat price freedom if you donât have a full bellyâ
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I guess even the rails have been neglected.
The energy woes in Europe have mostly been caused by a willful neglect in regards of diverse and reliable energy, because of the ‘green’ insanity, yet one of the first real victims of this insanity will be a poorer African nation.
I guess all the champagne socialist hot air about ending fossil fuels to ‘stop a climate crisis which will disproportionately affect poorer nations’ is really taking an ironic turn.
Same thing for the horrendous and exploitative cobalt mining in the Congo which is supplying the booming Li-ion battery industry to achieve a ‘green’ grid electrification goal which will just exacerbate load shedding events in every country eventually.
It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck which is totally avoidable, but everyone on the train is cheering about the utopia we can all live in once the train finally runs out of track.
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