One of my favourite folk bands is K, Ray and the Bird. One of its songs is Listen to the Criticism.

The first part of the lyrics are: “And it’s easy to criticise / And it’s easy to turn around and say: ‘Hey man, why don’t you try? / Hey man, why don’t you try? / But sometimes, Sometimes / You just gotta listen to the criticism / The criticism hurts but you can learn . . . / You won’t learn a thing when you don’t hear . . .”

So, having taken this to heart, I want to criticise our politicians. I know I have done a great deal of this lately. This may be very boring. But I want it set down. I want people to realise that the statements and words which follow were uttered by democratically elected politicians:

Valli Moosa, who served as Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister from 1999 to 2004 and was the chairperson of the Eskom board in 2008, when asked if the South African power pool could be augmented by gas turbines, said: “No, we have very little gas in this country.” Very true. But gas turbines run on gasified diesel fuel, not gas, and, despite this, Eskom built two very large diesel-fired gas turbine stations to form part of the power pool.

Then in an interview in which the Eskom power cuts of 2008 were mentioned, he said: “I’m quite certain that the events over the past few weeks and the power cuts that we’ve had would have contributed negatively to the mood of the population, so to say. And you know, the population goes through mood swings from time to time . . . when you do have power cuts like what we’ve had. We’ve had substantial power cuts over a long period of time on a daily basis, and it feeds into that kind of, in a sense, latent sentiment that is already there. And I think that the best way to overcome this is to change the reality, is not to have power cuts.

“At the end of the day, it’s not something that you can really go out there and have some sort of . . . campaign to make people feel better. What you’ve got to do is actually fix it, and keep the lights on.”

In a startling statement which classifies the South African engineering fraternity as fools, former Minerals and Energy Minister Pumzile Mlamo-Ngcuka said: “Energy efficiency opportunities are frequently overlooked due to the simple fact that industry and other consumers are unaware that they exist . . .” Right.

And then Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel, speaking at the recent opening of the KaXu Solar One plant, said that the first house in South Africa was electrified in 1890 and that, in 1996, five-million homes were connected to the grid. But between 1996 and today, South Africa added seven-million houses to the national grid, “doing more in 18 years than what the country previously managed in 106 years”.

Now, while this is not incorrect, we do have to add that, in the last 18 years, South Africa has driven the power supply to collapse not once but twice – in 2008 and now – which never happened in the past 106 years, ever.

Patel stated that 33 renewable-energy plants had been opened and that, by the end of the month, there would be 1 685 MW available – almost equivalent to Koeberg’s entire output. Really? Koeberg is 100 MW bigger.

He also said: “In 12 months, we have been building plants that will generate almost as much as Koeberg. The difference is that Koeberg generates all the time.” (Well, that is just a small point.) He went on to say all these renewable- energy projects are examples of government working hard to solve the electricity problem. Just for the record, every single wind farm. Photovoltaic plant and KaXu have not been paid for by government, “working hard” or not.

The situation with the power system is no joke. But we will all respond if we believe a leader will actually lead. But no! We get unthought-of statements such as these (and this is just a sample) from politicians who are supposed to be, um, political leaders. Pity.