After failing to be excited about President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fourth SA Investment Conference last week, someone was bound to say my column that appeared here on the day of the gathering was “negative”. In fact, it happened on the page opposite the very next edition, in an article that must have been written during the conference itself, by one of its participants.
The author, Isaah Mhlanga, is chief economist at Alexander Forbes, and a good one. But even he struggled to make a credible point. My column, he wrote, fell into the trap of not seeing the wood for the trees. Discovery’s Adrian Gore, he wrote, “made the point that the prevailing narrative about SA is too negative and could mean missed opportunities”. There is real progress in SA, he said. Not holding the conference would be like holding a fashion show at home. “No-one would know, and no-one would care.”
I perfectly understand Mhlanga’s points about private sector electricity, participation in rail and the ports, and the fact that the expropriation of land without compensation is not law. But it’s not my job to cheerlead for the president or empathise with his problems in the ANC, to explain what Mhlanga concedes is the painfully slow pace of reform. Ramaphosa’s problems aren’t mine or yours. Our job is to hold to account the people running the country, to keep them under as much pressure as possible for as long as possible.
I think my real job is to encourage readers we are still worth the effort, and the hope, despite our wretched government. We’re still a free country under a pretty decent constitution the president happened to have a big hand in. But when private sector embedded power generation is lifted from 1MW to 100MW, my dial doesn’t move. Why wasn’t the limit raised to 10,000MW? Go on, why not?
I’m afraid we may now be entering a period in which corruption will swell to dwarf the arms deal and the Guptas. Most fires start small. The arms deal needed an ageing and exhausted military. “Radical economic transformation” needed a financial crisis and growing unemployment.
The New Corruption will be the child of an abomination called The Just Transition. Watch. The Just Transition is supposedly there to protect the 88,000 jobs in coal. In fact it will, if we fail to keep a close watch, turn out to be the mother of all party-funding and get-rich schemes.
The Just Transition ludicrously suggests that to become a carbon neutral economy by 2050 we cannot simply stop burning coal and move to renewable energy but must, as a vital transitional measure, introduce an alternative to coal that might also act as a plausible precursor to solar, wind and battery power.
That has already been accepted by big business via the National Business Initiative, and the ANC via its chair, minerals & energy minister Gwede Mantashe. They both want to build a whole new, huge, infrastructure to land, transport and burn gas before we reach carbon net zero. They’re in a serious hurry. The money must be just titanic.
The only thing standing in their way is something called the Presidential Climate Change Commission. Nominally chaired by Ramaphosa, it is actually chaired by former minister Valli Moosa and actually run by a former director-general and activist, Crispian Olver. They were in Xolobeni in Pondoland this week, consulting the community there. Mantashe has been trying for years to get the same community to support the mining of adjacent mineral sands. They won’t let him.
The alternative to the Just Transition is … just a transition. From coal to renewables. Managed, certainly, but perfectly manageable right now. There’s less chance for graft. Within days of business falling into line on gas in February, the department of energy seems to have published requests for proposals on managing the acquisition of gas. Needless to say, the Russians quickly put up a hand. A few juicy contracts and the ANC wouldn’t be bankrupt any more. That’s how this rolls. Left of centre political parties have to steal to survive.
Can we stop it this time? If we don’t, in March 2041, not long after the final flourish is put on a gas pipeline from Coega to Johannesburg, we will be waiting for a senior judge to present the final final volume of a report into how we spent R1-trillion on gas infrastructure we never really used, can’t convert and will be paying for until the end of the century. The report will be familiar — auditors, consultants, bankers, officials, politicians.
The high road is to do renewables at five times the planned speed. The technology is already there. Anglo American says it will have its entire SA operation on renewable power by 2030. That’s practically next week. It’ll put hundreds of citizens into cages and send them 5km into the ground to mine and then bring them up again, rain or shine, wind or no wind, safe and sure every time.
Because it can be done.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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