The ANC is tearing itself and SA apart

SOUTH Africa’s government is at war. With itself.

It’s a military achievement of sorts. Feuding factions of the ANC have sabotaged South Africa’s infrastructure more effectively in the past few years than its armed wing managed in four decades of the Struggle.

Escalating acts of sabotage at Eskom last week put the country on the brink of stage 6 load shedding. That would have meant 10 hours without electricity in every 24-hour cycle.

This narrowly averted meltdown occurred when a pylon was deliberately toppled in an attempt to bring down two coal-feeding lines to the Lethabo power station. Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, who has always been reluctant to identify as malicious the growing litany of such incidents affecting the national grid, was forced to change his tune.

“For some time we have had suspicious incidents and I think this is the clearest indication we have had to date that there are individuals out there who seek to damage the economy by causing very significant and substantial load shedding.”

South African memories are short. Just two years ago, in December 2019, there were howls of fury and disbelief when Eskom had to impose stage 6 blackouts – then a mere fourand-a-half hours a day – because of the collapse of the national grid.

At the time, President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his customary “shock” at events and claimed, to widespread derision, that sabotage was the reason for the crisis. Now, it seems he was right, after all. South Africa is seeing a merging of criminal and political agendas that makes the country vulnerable to a guerilla-style campaign of targeted violence.

During the Struggle years, blowing up infrastructure like power lines, rail-road tracks and rolling stock, roads and bridges proved to be dishearteningly futile for the militants. There was sufficient surplus capacity in the economy to seamlessly adapt to these attempts to create havoc.

The fact that today the destruction of a single pylon can potentially cause such havoc highlights the infrastructural fragility caused by ANC policies and incompetence. Eskom’s ability to produce an abundance of cheap electricity, which was legendary worldwide, has been destroyed as surely as if it had been targeted by an invading army. In a sense, it has. An invading army of lotus-eaters, concerned with instant gratification and the minimum of work.

The South African railway network – once regarded as one of the world’s best – is, in the words of Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula, “a broken organisation”.

Thousands of kilometres of overhead cables, signalling wires and masts, as well as rail lines and sleepers, have been stolen. Entire railway stations have been dismantled, brick by brick, and carried off, without any arrests. Vandalism and arson cost Prasa, the passenger rail agency, almost R1billion in damaged infrastructure between 2017 and 2019.

The road network is similarly under siege. According to the Road Freight Association (RFA), in 2019 and 2020 more than 1300 trucks were attacked, damaged and destroyed. In the July unrest alone, 255 trucks were destroyed. The total cost to the freight industry of that week of chaos was R9bn, excluding the value of goods destroyed or looted. There have been no arrests.

Last year, when I spoke to Gavin Kelly, the CEO of the RFA, he didn’t mince his words: “This is a planned, co-ordinated destruction of the South African economy. These are co-ordinated, military-style attacks.”

The July attacks, he tells me, followed the same pattern. “This is not the kind of violence that characterises union-employer friction. There’s a deeper, darker picture of planned, well-timed strikes that the intelligence agencies are unable to track.”

The slow but sustained organisational and electoral disintegration of the ANC will accelerate public violence. The RET, with its paramilitary affiliations, has acted with complete impunity and will become bolder in seeking to impose its agenda by force.

Anything and everything possible will be done to prevent the slew of new, DA-led councils from operating. There will be more sabotage, intimidation and violence. Assassination, already widespread within ANC ranks between vying candidates for public office and key jobs, may conceivably be deployed against “enemy” opposition parties.

Ramaphosa’s singular lack of success in his previous “war room” deployment doesn’t engender confidence in the government’s commitment or ability to stamp its authority. It might be time for Ramaphosa to abandon his favourite tactic for dealing with his foes, that of “social compacting”, in favour of Napoleon’s favourite – “a whiff of grapeshot”.

Either way, there’s a rough ride ahead.