ONLY speaking for a tiny slice of the white radical petit-bourgeoisie in Johannesburg: no thanks, that kind of "wealth" is part of a model that has made a ridiculous mess of society, economy and environment already. SA has per capita CO2 emissions that rival Japan's even though half the population doesn't have access to electricity.
The problem, if you want a quick structural analysis, is that we in SA have what amounts to the world's cheapest energy--in price terms for the big users--but at the cost of hugely expensive socio-ecological damage caused by an energy/industrial policy that never factors pollution in (the full line of argument is below... but don't miss the work of Ben Fine on this issue). Free electricity for all is the popular demand; to get there we need to stop the cheap power for the corporates, and do so by a) costing in environmental damage and b) applying rudimentary cost-benefit analysis to the enormously wasteful special electricity subsidies enjoyed by the aluminum and steel smelters.
> The question is: "how much of one, and how much of the other?"
> Personally, I think that developing countries poorer than Mexico is
> today should have *no* obligations to control their emissions of,
> say, greenhouse gases for the next fifty years.
Then come to SA sometime, comrade Brad, and I guarantee you'll revise that statement. We need greenhouse gas controls simply to get out of the self-destructive export-led minerals-beneficiation model that the Wash Con has pushed us into.
> On the other hand, I would be unhappy (and you would be unhappy) if
> there were more oil pollution in the Niger delta, and nothing in
> exchange but fatter first-world bank accounts for Nigerian generals...
That's more like it. In a modified way, this is precisely the inheritance of apartheid-capitalist industrialisation:
***
Sunday Independent, 18 July 1999
Power to the powerful: Ideology of apartheid energy still distorts electricity sector
by Patrick Bond
South Africa's surreal energy problems reflect the kinds of contradictions you would expect during a transition from apartheid economic history to a contemporary electricity pricing system all too often based on (`neoliberal') market-policy for households, complicated by massive subsidies for big corporations, in one of the world's most unequal societies.
There are at least three world-class development disasters here: our economy's skewed over-reliance on (and oversupply of) pollution-causing, coal-generated electricity; the lack of equitable access amongst households along class/race lines (with serious adverse gender implications); and periodic township rioting associated with power cuts resulting from nonpayment.
Plenty of other challenges for a revitalised energy policy could be mentioned. But assuming Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wants justice to be done during the ANC's second term (and is less distracted by shady Liberian consultants or groundless attacks on the auditor general than her predecessor), merely addressing electricity distribution would require a serious challenge to corporate power and neoliberal ideology. Instead of praising the filthy rich (who can forget?), the minister would have to subsidise filthy impoverished townships currently suffocating under winter coal fumes.
An outstanding recent book, The Political Economy of South Africa by Ben Fine and Zav Rustomjee, puts this sector into economic perspective. Here we locate electricity at the heart of the economy's `Minerals- Energy Complex,' a `system of accumulation' unique to this country. Mining, petro-chemicals, metals and related activities which historically accounted for around a quarter of economic activity typically consumed 40 percent of all electricity.
Thus Eskom was centrally responsible for South Africa's economic growth, but, Fine and Rustomjee show, at the same time fostered a debilitating dependence on the (declining) mining industry. Economists refer to this as a `Dutch disease,' in memory of the damage done to Holland's economic balance by its cheap North Sea oil.
South African electricity consumption (per capita) soared to a level similar to Britain, even though black--`African'--South Africans were denied domestic electricity for decades. To accomplish this feat, Eskom had to generate emissions of greenhouse gasses twice as high per capita as the rest of the world, alongside enormous surface water pollution, bucketing acid rain and dreadfully low safety/health standards for coal miners.
To what end? Today, most low-income South Africans still rely for a large part of their lighting, cooking and heating energy needs upon paraffin (with its burn-related health risks), coal (with high levels of domestic and township-wide air pollution) and wood (with dire consequences for deforestation). Women, traditionally responsible for managing the home, are more affected by the high cost of electricity and spend far more time and energy searching for alternative energy.
Ecologically-sensitive energy sources--such as solar, wind and tidal--have barely begun to be explored, while the few hydropower plants (especially in neighbouring Mozambique) are based on controversial large dams that, experts argue, do more harm than developmental good.
Some inherited electricity dilemmas stem from a racist, irrational and socially-unjust history. Conventional wisdom even before 1948, we must never forget, was that `temporary sojourners' were in cities merely to work; they would not consume much-- certainly not household appliances--since their wages were pitiably low. As Jubilee 2000 South Africa observes with justifiable bitterness, more than half of the World Bank's $200+ million in apartheid credits from 1951-66 were for Eskom's expansion, including coal-powered stations. But none of the benefits found their way to the homes of the majority of citizens. Even by 1994, fewer than four in ten African households had electricity.
Meanwhile, corporate South Africa suffered the opposite problem--an embarrassment of energy riches-- especially when terribly poor planning at Eskom two decades ago led to massive overcapacity (which at peak in the early 1990s allowed for more than 30% more generation than demanded). The late-apartheid solution, inherited and amplified today, was to give the corporates ever-cheaper power and penalise the poor with extremely expensive prepaid meter systems (which are never installed, note angry community activists, in bourgeois, formerly white areas).
The meagre electricity consumed by low-income households (less than 3 percent of the total) costs them at least four times more per kiloWatt hour than paid by well-connected corporates. Was it a coincidence, one might reasonably enquire, that Eskom's finance officer revolved out the door to head a major division of Gencor-Billiton, and then won the same cheap pricing deal for the ill-fated Coega zinc smelter that he'd earlier given Alusaf? (Meanwhile, thousands of nearby Port Elizabeth township households had their power cut since 1997, due to poverty.)
Defenders of the big corporates argued they help mop up the excess capacity and do so at off-peak hours, and that the poor create larger administrative costs per unit. As a result, policy avoided the kinds of `cross-subsidies'--by which big users pay more per unit than those consuming a bare minimum--that the RDP called for, and that are finally being installed in some large urban water distributions. (Even a kiloWatt hour free per day as a `lifeline' to all consumers could have a dramatic effect on consumption for those who need it, while higher prices would potentially teach big users to conserve.)
Instead, government policy has imposed `cost- reflective tariffs,' as a 1995 document insisted. The 1998 White Paper is an improvement on previous versions, but it too makes the counterproductive argument that `Cross-subsidies should have minimal impact on the price of electricity to consumers in the productive sectors of the economy.'
Worse, the Department of Provincial and Local Government's Municipal Infrastructure Investment Framework supports only the installation of 5-8 Amp connections for households with less than R800 per month income, which does not offer enough power to turn on a hotplate or a single-element heater. (Thanks to social movement advocacy, this is at least better than the original policy, drafted largely by the World Bank in 1994-95, which had offered low- income households no electricity hookup.)
The 1995 energy policy also argued that `Fuelwood is likely to remain the primary source of energy in the rural areas.' As if on cue, Eskom began to wind down its rural electrification programme and does not envisage electrifying the nation's far-flung schools. Notwithstanding Eskom's commercialisation fetish, its economists had badly miscalculated rural affordability. Paying as much as R0,48 per hour (compared to a corporate average of R0,06 and bigger discounts for the Alusaf), rural women use up their pre-paid metre cards within a week and can't afford to buy another until the next pension payout.
But in pricing power out of reach of the poor, the well-paid economists from Eskom, the World Bank and government refused to incorporate `multiplier effects' that would benefit broader society, were people granted a small free lifeline electricity supply: better public health, a cleaner environment, more SMMEs, infrastructure construction jobs and more equal relations between men and women.
If Mlambo-Ngcuka cares about such `public goods' as much as `getting the prices right' (for privatisation?), she now has a chance to transform neoliberal electricity policy, muffling that suspicious echo of apartheid-era power.
(A longer version of the argument is in the March 2000 issue of Capitalism Nature Socialism.) Patrick Bond (pbond at wn.apc.org) home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa phone: (2711) 614-8088 work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa work email: bond.p at pdm.wits.ac.za work phone: (2711) 717-3917 work fax: (2711) 484-2729 cellphone: (27) 83-633-5548