of southern africa over to will cease to cease very heavy rain was flooding in the s. what tany, i'm mozambique ah, the serious, darkest days with one man leading the country through pleasant us out as los legitimacy. he needs to step down. how is he retained control through over a decade of war? we examine the global power games of president bashar al assad. we believe assad simply carrying out iranian orders. what keeps you awake at night? when the reason that could effect in human assert master of chaos on older 0, south africa has declared a national disaster to face a dire energy crisis. the president says it's a threat to the economy and the nation social fabric. but is this move enough? and what caused the emergency in the 1st place? this is inside story.

ah hello and welcome to the program. i'm a hammer, jim jerome, south africa, has been experiencing one of the worst energy crises in the region. in years, it's affecting millions of people across the country. the nation's aging coal powered electrical stations are not coping with demand. and it's leading to daily blackouts that can sometimes last 4 hours for patients on life support. it's a stressful time, especially when electricity doesn't come on as scheduled. in some farms, animals are dying before reaching the slaughterhouse opposition. politicians and demonstrators have blamed the governing agency party president sore. i'm opposed to declare the state of disaster on friday while emphasizing his government's efforts to transition to cleaner energy. the national disaster management center

has consequently classified the energy crisis and its impact as a disaster. we are therefore declaring a national state of disaster to respond to the electricity crisis. and in fact, we will continue our just transition to a low carbon economy at a pace our country is able to keep up with and at the pace we can afford. and in a manner that ensures energy security, we will undertake our just transition in a way that opens up the possibility of new investments, new industrialization, and that above all creates new jobs. the sustained load shedding as it's known in

south africa is putting at risk the nation's economic stability. the most simple daily tasks like cooking, travel, or working have to be planned around power outages. some businesses that rely heavily on electricity to produce their goods and services have gone bankrupt. this includes modern farming, which is putting food supplies at risk and unreliable power supplies, or worrying investors, which in return affects economic growth. all right, let's go ahead and bring in our guess they're all joining us from south africa today. in johannesburg, kenneth creamer, an economic advisor to the agencies economic transformation committee in cuba. her formerly known as port elizabeth on gama met him, come a lecturer at the nelson mandela university. and also when janice burg is chris yellen and energy analyst, a warm welcome to you all. and thanks for joining us today on inside story. on gamma, let me start with you today. our topic is essentially the power crisis that's going on south africa. as i understand it,

you don't have much battery left on your phone right now and you don't have electricity. so i want to ask you about how dire the situation is currently in south africa when it comes to all these power outages. when it comes to the energy crisis. the situation is very dia, the south africa is the most industrialized country in the, in the continent. and the cities in some of the quite honest provinces that attract a lot of jobs are manufacturing cities. the city of america is a automotive harper in the country are also known as the detroit of south africa. likewise, the city of london with these continuing at load chevy. they serve as a battalion graham against the sustainable economies of the cities. and it's been for such a long time, and the problem seems and intractable when it comes to both those that are acting

within the confines of the state utility company as com. but also the politicians that i meant to enable the work office. com, starting from the party to the level of the president and his ministers on gamma. i want to continue on with you in case we lose you. there is a concern about that. so let me follow up with you and ask you this declaration of a national disaster to face this energy crisis by president, rama poser. from your vantage point, is that actually going to be enough? in order to lead, during the time of crisis, you need to give the leaders a degree of latitude to be able to take decisions and also to act faster and self africa being a democracy that hardly happens. i like china way if the government says we're going to build a port and everybody must move in from africa. you've got to many interested groups

that lobby against. but did you not course of actions and in a country like ours were open in crisis mode. you cannot afford to have some of the cumbersome processes, but i do accept the critique by those who are critical of this dance to say we shouldn't have been in this place in the 1st place. we should have been implemented to solving the problem. however, we find ourselves in a crisis and i think that is data disaster that does allow the government some latitude for miracles and procedures point of view. but we do know that that does open up the procurement to potential corruption. and unfortunately, a government like ours that faces a credibility crisis is struggling to come is going to struggle to convince of africans about the need. but i think that we need to have that state of disaster, national disaster so that you could have

a framework of taking actions that are targeted towards resolving the problem without being bogged down by some of the ordinary rules and procedures that by the government procurement and infrastructure delivery in the country can and also to protect it in anticipation of the public outcry for the potential procurement. the president did announce that they're going to open the auditor general and that the auditor general and is an office of i reputed to talk to my institution that supports democracy. can it does give a little bit of such that, notwithstanding the permissible at environmental corruption and looting the, the role of got in touch. and that is going to be quite a tell in given assurance to stakeholders. but the agency is not about creating a blank check for it to lose state because losses and not to leave out on the images that we meet. a kenneth, the president rama poses called the energy crisis in his the state of the nation

address, an existential threat. to the economy and the social fabric of our country. we also heard on gamma. they're talking about the fact that the agency has a credibility crisis. i'm curious to know from your vantage point, why was this not dealt with more before now? why did it have to get to this point and how much is the current situation imperiling? the country is the thank you very much. i agree with much of what we're gonna has said about the the declaration of the state of disaster. but you are some very important question, the effects that this is having on our economy. whether we declare at the state of disaster or not is pretty disastrous. we have high unemployment, which is, is made worse by the lack of electricity. the gross domestic fixed investment levels are lower than they have been and haven't really recovered since before the cobra crisis back to the level. so investment is difficult. there is some

investment taking place by investing in their own electricity supplies the lot have been changed to allow for firms to do that. and also now households are going to be incentivized to be able to buy their own solar panels. that just, that is some investment, but it's really investment in response to the low setting rather than investment in, in new factories, new mines, new found, the cetera. the truth of the matter is that we do need, we do know what needs to be done to overcome this electricity crisis. the anti government has put together a plan in july last year in energy action plan, which had good short to medium term and long term interventions. i think the problem is the electricity prices have been building up for so many years. and proper attention has not been paid to it. but i think with the declaration of

this state of disaster with the energy plan now being given that extra impetus, we will begin to turn the corner. and we will be able to start to institute those reform and that are needed. i think also what is needed is a unity of purpose in implementing those reforms. unfortunately, when you have a crisis and gone, the sales people are pulling in opposite directions. i do believe that the agency will be able to unite the country, both business labor and communities around the program under the president's leadership, which will be able to begin to addresses electricity crisis for once and for all that it's a very deep crisis and it's gonna take some years to come, but we will begin to see the beginning of the eval really being a number of interventions as a cit, businesses on our lot to invest in their own capacity. households will be a lot to 1st of all get tax incentives for the solar panels that they buy and then

future the some council that will be feeding therapy where they can begin to feed into the grid. just to summarize at this 2 pillars to this one is to bring as much generation capacity on stream as quickly as possible. and the 2nd is to improve the performance of the is come, power stations. thank you, kenneth, let me just a continue in this vein because, you know, we're talking about this is state of disaster that is being implemented now of course there was a state of his answer disaster. there was also implemented during the coven pandemic. and, and there were many critics of that, and they said that there were a lot of people that have been abusing those emergency measures. clearly, there is a concern about the potential for corruption. when it comes to these measures, president, rama poser has said that he anticipates potential corruption and it measures are going to be put in place to prevent that from happening. what might some of those measures b? yes, you're quite right there is skepticism. funnily enough, some of the political parties that actually called for the agency and the government implement the state of the last, are now suddenly getting cold peace and are threatening to take it to court. so

there's a lot of flip flopping involved in. and because of the is this concern during the cobra crisis? many countries around the world had to do extraordinary things to respond to that crisis in south africa. some of that extraordinary things proved to be very effective. you know, the vaccine roll out, closing schools, closing businesses temporarily with negative on the economy, but it was driven by the public health impaired. so those are the good public health outcomes that we had. unfortunately, they were people who took a bondage and stole from the public, unbelievably so in the period of a crisis like that, i, the government has said when the president denounced the state of disaster, he responded to that fear legitimately to say this. it will be an oversight of this process by the order to general, to let, to make sure that we are able to not allow people to steal or to do corrupt things . the main advantages of the state of disaster would be that we can accelerate procurement. we can increase the security and prosecute prosecution of those who

have been disrupting the work of it. and also just have see that unity of purpose around the plans that are in place. we need to centralize around the plans of the government to default this problem. and move together, and i think the, the state of the signal that, that unity of purpose can be achieved. chris, i want to talk for a moment about what the power shortage is. what this energy crisis means for the economy, especially, and for overall economic growth in south africa. i mean how much, let's just take one example. how much worse does the situation get for small businesses? a look at it, you know, it's the level of load shipping that we experience, you know, in technical terms admit, is called stage one stage tuesday street or whatever in practical terms. it reflects in the number of hours that we go with our power per day. so for the

lowest stages of low jetting when might go without 2 hours or 4 hours. ready a day when you reach stage or low jetting, you're going at about 6 hours a lot of power the day and stage 6, you're going about 8 to 10 hours of, of without power. so the, the level of disruption depends on the severity of the shipping and the way. and it is, of course, very disruptive at lower levels. people learn to cope with the lower level that they're getting. it's only a few hours a day and one can work around it. and one gets to regard these lower levels of budgeting as the kind of new normal when you get to the higher levels of budgeting, stage 5, say 6. or when you're looking at 8 to 10 hours of logins a day, the economic impacts are incredibly severe. so it's not a linear relationship between the level of getting and the amount of economic

disruption. in fact, it's kind of an exponential relationship. the higher the luxury, you get dramatically more impact on the economy. to the extent with some businesses just cannot operate, they come and actually work around and you get this lots of, for example, livestock disruptions to the supply chains, water supply chains of food supply chain cetera. and the disruption to the economy, you know, can be estimated. but what is hard to estimate is the loss of opportunities, investment opportunities, those investment that do not get buy or walk away because south africa seen as an unreliable destination in respect of electricity. and many industries do rely on a continuous electricity supply as a viable. so the economic impacts all sounds far and wide, you know, from the individual level to, to small business, medium business and process industries. of course, feel it very significantly because they rely on 24 hour day continuous operation.

and chris, if i could just follow up with you, i mean, when you're talking about on the individual level, i mean, how does something like this have an impact on, let's say, unemployment is the high unemployment rate right now in south africa, especially youth unemployment rate. so how is that impacting, you know, the unemployment rates across the country? it is significant because electricity at the moment is not acting as a lubricant to the economy. the lack of electricity is acting as an inhibitor to economic growth. so it is inhibiting expansion of business. our growth rate in south africa is remarkably low for a developing countries to the extent where the growth in g d. p in south africa is less than the growth of the population. and therefore. busy the per capita g d p is actually declining and has been declining for several years. and we and

people are getting poorer. it is the net effect on average, people are getting poorer. and a significant part of this slow growth environment that we experience is the, the constraints on the economy that a lack of electricity or inadequate supply electricity causes. and we see this the effect is this going without power for many hours a day, which impacts on economic activity in the country on gama. first of all, i'm glad that you're still with us. let me ask you about something that kenneth mentioned a few minutes ago. he was talking about the fact that there are opposition politicians or parties that are not happy about the, about these emergency measures that are going to be put in place. so i want to ask from your perspective, where do things stand across the political spectrum when it comes to the declaration and will those who are opposed to these measures actually be able to

block it, whether it be through a court challenge or other political machinations. so i think the best way to reach the political environment for our response to the crises is not looking at the constitutive parts of our political system. but the cumulative impact of all the us and the effect that they have opposition but is in themselves, do not have power in the cabinet or in parliament in order to, you know, make a significant stop h who a program of government. however, in that necklace between an executive conduct and the law or politics and that law, they get at instances find an opportunity where they can leverage it by digital a legal issue in order to stop a process. otherwise,

that then helps and augment their power. when you compare that with the lobby groups that interest it, and i think it was kenneth was talking about the various interests and the need for unity of purpose. the look big groups who are wanting south africa's piece of transitioning to clean the energies who have been in a way that begins to threaten that just a mess of that transition in terms of that a for example, in from those thing. but he mentioned in terms of how we need to address the problem, there is a role for making sure that the last of what our qualify and our stations have in the short term is leveraged, while managing the build program and ensuring that industry them. you also, you know, addressing the long term challenges, we have

a situation in which there's a complex web that serve could billy that agenda, stealing in good faith with our crisis in a ways that are focused on what our problems are. that is energy insecurity. and the best way to deal with it through the entire mix or solutions that me s. so what makes the political environment a lot more complex is not necessarily the action of opposition a low, but also the, the, the, the, the, the, the web offer relationships which are interested in, comically in this, both from the n c. and from outside that make our job a lot more difficult. kenneth, president rahman pose a has also said that he's going to appoint a minister of electricity with full responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the electricity response. when is that going to be done?

is not quite sure when that is going to be done. he announced it in the state of the nation that race on thursday night. and i think it was an intervention from his part if we can reach between the lines to try and ensure that he's able to bring all the members of his government and all the members of his political party into alignment with regard to implementing his energy action plan, so i'm sure he will be doing it pretty speedily and will be announced when he's ready to announce that. so. but as i was saying that the energy transition that is taking place throughout the world in all countries, energy is changing. the technology is changing. in south africa, we have a particular program of a just energy transition, which is saying, well there are certain people are going to be affected negatively in the cult producing region. and those people who are negatively affected need to have pathways towards new employment and towards new economic activity. but i do believe

that the, one of the consequences of the severity of this load shifting is that we're going to accelerate the just energy transition in south africa. it is the, in the way out of our energy crisis to bring new solar and wind and battery and other technologies as quickly and cheaply onto the grid as possible . like i did in vietnam, allowing it to happen from the bottom up and the top down by ensuring the foods and household can do it as well. so i think that one of the reason why it's taking so long it's taken so long because we have not had unity of purpose on this just energy foundation. there was even a time when the leadership of his come cancel the a program of bringing on solar and wind projects that wasn't needed for the major area that was made under that drug leadership at that time. so i do think a consequence of this now having a new minister to implement this plan is to hillary. that is the transition as the

shortest path out of our energy crisis. chris, from your point of view of it, you know, you were talking, you were laying out all the all the challenges to the economy right now. uh, from your point of view it, will the government actually be able to do this on its own or, or is the private sector going to need to be involved? first rule. to answer that specifically. there isn't my binion and the possibility that the public procurement processes and governments can address this problem in the short term. and government processes are procurement processes and large mega projects and sorting out s call are long term, longer term activities. and in the short term, the solutions again to come from the customers of electricity through self generation, embedded generation distributed generation, and

a massive roll out of rooftop p. v and battery energy storage in domestic commercial and cultural sector. that's where the wins would come from. and the role of government in this environment is to put out the right to it can not make signals and incentives to enable the private sector and customers of electricity to respond quickly. because in this way, literally hundreds of thousands of individuals at small business, medium businesses, large business mines, can respond to these economic signal, civil, tiniest lee. instead of trying to micro manage and major projects which take a long time, i believe the role of government in the short term is to put out the right. it can only signals. and i just want to touch on the points that are raised by terrorist treatment. and i do appreciate is optimism and the idea that people need to work together and especially in government and we often criticize opposition for being

divisor. but in fact, the real divisions are happening within the ruling party and within government. and i have a concern that the appointment of this new minister of electricity in the presidency is adding an extra layer of complexity to the government structures, governance structures of electricity, which already very onerous. so at the moment now, right, this is new and ministry. there is now 3 ministry is involved in electricity. the department of the orders was an energy department of public enterprises, department of electricity. this new when, of course this to in very well that is a national treasury and responsible for money and the a responsible for governmental for governance. and if you have 5 ministries involved and it would be good if they were all of a common purpose, as kenneth pointed out and working in the same direction. but the reality,

reality is not, they are not. they are often in war with each other. finger pointing against each other and criticize each other publicly. they have different agendas and, and they all pulling right from directions, chris and in that environment it's very hard to see how this will bring immediate action fos. right, chris, i'm sorry to interrupt you, but we are running out of time. i 1st want to mention that we have lost on gama. he ran out of battery and does not have power. so that really goes to show how dire the situation is in south africa. kenneth, we only have about a minute and a half left. i want to give you a chance to respond to a chris was saying, he was essentially mentioning his concern that basically he's saying there's too much bureaucracy. there's too many ministries involved in this. is that going to get any better? look, i think it is a valid concern and we live in a democracy in south africa. so there's a lot of voices. it's very vocal, which is a good thing. we have quotes that can check where the government is doing things properly and can go and review. so we have

a free media. so these are all positive things that we we do have. but unfortunately, government has become from dysfunctional lead times. we had a period of what is known as state capture grand corruption with state agencies repurposed by people with criminal intent. and i think the president has spent some time in rebuilding the least intelligent structures the prosecuting authorities. and it is some progress being made to clean up the government. but i think what we're talking about is a bit of a deeper issue regarding the unity around the vision for solving the energy crisis . and i do believe we only be able to judge this by the fruit if the president is and by appointing a minister in his office to bang the heads together and to bring it on together. then i think we will build the judgment and that is not. we don't not successful in the month. all right, well we have run out of time, so we are going to have to leave the conversation there. thanks so much. all of our

guests can screamer on gum on him and chris yellen and thank you to for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting our website 0 dot com and for further discussion, go to our facebook page. that's facebook dot com, forward slash ag inside story. you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is at a j inside story. for me, i met them job and the whole team here. and uh huh. bye for now. the aah! and women run micro businesses are key to center goals development and to improved food

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