Politics.za

Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin is wondering where all this talk of sabotage is coming from, when he obviously never meant it. Let’s take a look at what he and Minister of Energy and Mineral Affairs Lindiwe Hendricks said in the days following the blackouts.

Let me be very clear on this. The bolt that caused the generator’s destruction did not get there by accident.

It has become clear that the recent event cannot just be linked to inadequate transmission or generation capacity. Clearly other forces are at play here.

Now the only other implication that can possibly be made from those quotes is that of incompetence (and even then it’s a stretch). So Erwin can make a choice: sabotage or incompetence. Which is worse at a nuclear power station?

It seems Minister of Public Enterprise Alec Erwin (who is in charge of all parastatals like our beloved Eskom) is not going to rule out the possibility of intentional sabotage in the continued rolling blackouts that are affecting the Western Cape. Now the more cynical of you reading this blog might take this with a kilogram or two of salt, after all there is an election tomorrow and the ANC in the Western Cape is competing in it’s closest race (Cape Town) in the region. No doubt Alec would love to plant that tired old canard of ‘Well… who would really benefit from blackouts? Certainly not the ANC!’ in voters heads.

When it comes to looking at a situation I tend to follow a few simple rules, and one of the most prominent is ‘never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity’. Where Alec Erwin sees Hellen Zille in ninja garb rapelling down the side of Koeberg’s reactor housing and snapping the necks of innocent security guards, I see growth in the economy without any growth in the infrastructure to support that growing economy (are you listening Telkom, because I have a feeling this applies to you as well) and the shortsightedness (whether because of greed, laziness or just ignorace) that has not put any long term solutions in place.

But the fact remains, and people should not forget this, is that even if there is some sabotage (and I seriously doubt this) then the administration at Koeberg are still negligent in allowing it to happen. Stupidity or malice… it’s still the fault of Eskom and the government departments who oversee it.