In power, but certainly not in charge

STATE power can be less impressive than it seems. Sometimes, when tested, it is shown to be surprisingly brittle and illusory.

In tandem with the decline in its electoral fortunes and a president who is cautious to the point of timidity, we are seeing an ANC government that is increasingly reluctant or unable to exercise the legitimate security powers upon which depend the survival of South Africa as a functioning, modern state.

Another complicating, compounding factor is the uncomfortable truth that those who are literally destroying the infrastructural fabric of the country are disaffected former supporters from the ANC’s biggest political constituency, black Africans.

It’s one thing for the minister of police to order the arrest of the bikini-ed blondes on Clifton beach during the lockdown. Quite another for him to respond forcefully against criminality that appears to be fomented by militants within the black nationalist Radical Economic Transformation faction of his own party.

Last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration showed fatal levels of paralysis when the riots broke out in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. For four days, the police looked on, from a safe distance, as the mobs looted and plundered, restrained only by community defence organisations and, eventually, by the taxi organisations miffed by the loss of commuter revenue.

Recent events are a further reminder that the power the government can exercise is limited. Last month, an illegal blockade by truck drivers closed the N3, the vital link between the Gauteng economic hub with the country’s major port, for four days. A few arrests were made but everyone was subsequently released without charges.

And now, Stage 6 load shedding, which is to teeter terrifyingly close to a national blackout. If this were to happen, for technical reasons it would take weeks to restore power generation.

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan ascribed the catastrophic levels of load shedding to the sabotage of Eskom facilities.

So, too, has Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter, who has, on several occasions, detailed specific acts of sabotage that have wiped out power generation, as they happened.

It’s been clear from the pattern of the damage that destruction is not only wreaked with the benefit of insider knowledge of the most critical pylons and transformers, but that some of it can only have been carried out by Eskom workers operating on-site.

Despite the Eskom facilities falling under the provisions of the apartheid era’s Key Point legislation, which gives draconian powers to the security services to ensure their safety, there have been no arrests and the sabotage is escalating.

Despite the availability of facialrecognition CCTV and biometric access controls – additional layers of security not available during the apartheid era – there have been no arrests and the sabotage is escalating.

It makes for irresistible and unflattering comparisons. It is a fact that more damage has been done to Eskom’s power grid in the past year by Eskom workers and disgruntled ANC supporters than all Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers and agents together managed in almost 50 years of the Struggle.

During that period, 25 somewhat ineffectual documented bombings of Eskom pylons took place, for which 29 people were arrested, 14 were charged and 10 were convicted, ultimately serving between five and 15 years in jail. The disruptions caused not a hiccough to the apartheid economy.

The present government’s impotence, in comparison, is embarrassing. Striking Eskom workers, seeking a double-digit wage increase from a bankrupt power utility that is grossly overstaffed, have ignored a court injunction declaring it an unprotected strike and launched violent attacks on workers who have tried to work.

The SA Police Service public order units are “monitoring the situation”. That’s political-speak for watching the chaos from a safe distance.

It was left to the DA to state the obvious. Yesterday, it called upon the national police commissioner to “actively take operational command to restore law and order and Eskom power stations”. Until now, the appropriately named Fannie Masemola apparently has been sitting on his, doing sweet nothing.

The president, in contrast, has been decisive in his intervention. No, it wasn’t to order arrests or instruct the National Prosecuting Authority to apply for punitive damages orders against the law-flouting unions. It was to order Eskom to move from a wage freeze to a starting offer of 7%, but at any costs to end the strike.

That’ll teach them not to break the law.