Article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/10/south-africas-ramaphosa-calls-state-of-disaster-on-power
Summary: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared a ‘state of disaster’ in his country regarding his country’s major daily power outages, which have lasted up to 8 hours a day. This declaration will allow his government to make power blackout exemptions to vital services such as water treatment facilities and hospitals and also be able to buy emergency power from neighboring countries. Eskom, the country’s power utility, has failed to cover electricity for the country as years of corruption have stacked up and aging coal-powered electrical plants are beginning to fail. Additionally, a minister of power is to be appointed to deal with the crisis and the declaration will allow the government to aid energy businesses in developing energy infrastructure.
Analysis: South Africa is facing a fairly similar situation that other African states such as Zimbabwe and Nigeria faced regarding corruption in its power utility supply. The issue tends to relate to the privatization of energy, however, with South Africa, the ruling government itself is abusing the utility to fill their pockets. The major takeaway from these failures is how it affects the economies of these countries, with these countries having high potential of economic growth, but corruption related to power hindering such growth. While it isn’t easy to prove the role of Ramaphosa’s ruling party in the incident, their party have not been out of power since the 90s, which makes it unlikely a different party had connections to the incident. South Africa’s ANC (the ruling party) is very hands on when regarding the economy and business, which is why the government directly owns the main power utility of the state. Venezuela similarly tried this, however, its ruling regime had used it to make themselves rich, which led to similar power outages in 2019 which lasted for days on end. Overall, government corruption led to this event and it is greatly harming the citizens of South Africa and its economy.
Connection to Class: The reality of South Africa belonging to a shatter belt makes it hard for the state to get out of this crisis, as it cannot fully rely on its neighbors to bail it out of power-related concerns forever. An ethnically diverse state like Namibia and especially Mozambique could erupt into civil war or factionalism similar to the C.A.R and the D.R.C. at any time, in which South Africa could no longer buy emergency power from that “state” to provide for itself. South Africa has to find a way to reach energy independence, while being able to prevent further energy crises.