Is Eskom yet another issue on which one side’s biases are ignorance, the other side’s the truth?
Being load-shed together has not united South Africans. It has, as usual, produced two sets of competing slogans. Both are dressed up as truth yet both are almost entirely free of it. But, in the mainstream, one side gets its biases accepted as unquestioned truth.
Trade union knee-jerk reactions are automatically dismissed as signs of prejudice, malice or both. To be sure, union leaders do their best to live up to the label. In an interview last week, one declared that independent power producers were ripping Eskom off, but didn’t know how much a unit of Eskom-generated electricity cost, which, of course, makes comparison impossible.
They dismiss any form of private provision of a public service as a conspiracy against the people: if that were true, the government should make its own computers and tea to avoid procuring them from private suppliers. Unions have become very good at sounding as if they say “no” only because it is easier than coming up with solutions.
But the sage advice on the other side is no more grounded in reality. On the contrary, it is usually a bundle of prejudices dressed up as evidence. The first constant theme is that Eskom’s key problem is labour costs — too many workers who are paid too much. So the government must “get tough” and ensure hard-working taxpayers no longer fund loafers.
Those who demand that government throw people into the streets rarely if ever produce evidence to prove that this is needed. Labour costs probably are a problem at Eskom but this is not because work-shy people in overalls sip tea and draw fat salaries. It seems equally likely that this is not Eskom’s only or most important problem.
The “get tough” demand seems based on amnesia. It was tried in 2018, triggered the first load-shedding for a long time and ended quickly when it became clear that the “get tough” lobby would not put up with the strikes that are inevitable when all you have to tell workers is that they will get no increase or lose their jobs.
If Eskom does need to tackle labour costs, common sense suggests that the way to do it is not to drop it on unions at negotiation time: it would need conversations over a few months. And, in a market in which jobs shrink almost daily, why should workers and unions live with job cuts unless those who are losing out are offered alternatives — such as reskilling and a real chance to startup on their own? Until either is tried, blaming workers expresses a prejudice, not evidence or logic.
The second theme is that the problem is the poor, who are said to use huge quantities of power without paying for it: billions are, we are told, poured down a township hole every day. The only source for these claims seems to be media reports quoting public figures who also have no evidence for their claims.
Yes, illegal connections are used in townships and shack settlements. But even if we ignore the complicated moral issues of who should pay, the revenue gained by forcing the poor to pay would do little to fix Eskom’s woes — one of which is that it is also owed by some very large organisations. But then why worry about evidence? It is far easier to demand that people who are unlike you pay a price.
The difference between unionists and the dump-on-working-people-and-the-poor brigade is not that the one speaks truth and the other does not. It is that one has the influence to make its bias seem true and the other does not.
• Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.