My irritation has reached the point that I can no longer ignore it. And I am afraid that my irritation is with some of my journalistic colleagues (no, not at Engineering News, as will soon become apparent). I may seem to be being rather pedantic, yet I do feel it does have symbolic importance. What is annoying me, more and more, is the growing habit of some colleagues to refer to President Jacob Zuma as the country’s ‘First Citizen’.

So what? Well, the thing is, that is not a demo- cratic title. Indeed, it is a most undemocratic one. And it is also very un-republican, too. It was, in fact, the official short title and form of address for Roman emperors in the period known to historians as the principate (roughly 27 BC to AD 284). Yes, that’s right: you addressed a Roman emperor in this period as ‘First Citizen’. Indeed, the term principate comes from the Latin word princeps – first, or leading, citizen.

Hollywood gives the completely wrong idea of what happened in Rome at the end of the Republic. The first emperor, Gaius Octavius (known to us as Octavian), nephew and adopted son of Gaius Julius Caesar, did not, officially, overthrow the republic and institute a monarchy. Far from it! Awarded the honorific title of Augustus by the Roman Senate in 27 BC (and so referred to, in modern times, as the Emperor Augustus – augustus means ‘revered one’ or ‘revered personage’), Octavian/Augustus always firmly claimed to have restored the republic, not destroyed it. Caesar had been assassinated because he had been seen to have overthrown the republic and replaced it by one-man rule. That was a mistake Augustus never repeated.

Strictly speaking, de jure, the Roman Republic carried on. De facto, Augustus turned it into the Roman Empire. He did so, not by creating any new offices or titles (not even princeps), but by concurrently holding a number of offices, with their concomitant powers, that would previously have been held by a number of different men. (As usual, in the ancient world, women could hold no office other than that of priestess, but elite Roman women could be very influential, politically.) Thus, while keeping the form of the republic, he totally subverted it from within.

This complex system, in which emperors pretended to be republicans and governed through a variety of offices that they held at the same time, was finally swept away by the Emperor Diocletian (reigned AD 284 to 305), who, in a series of radical reforms designed to stabilise Rome after a long period of turmoil, civil war and war, finally made the empire explicitly a monarchy (although he did not entrench the hereditary principle) and required that he (and subsequent emperors) be addressed as dominus – ‘lord’.

Thus, First Citizen is a title with ominous connotations. Indeed, American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov revived the title to apply it to his character of the mutant dictator in the novels Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation.

No doubt there are political opponents and critics of Zuma, as well as some commentators and analysts, who would say that the title First Citizen is entirely proper and appropriate for him, precisely because of the reasons that I have given. They would argue that he is, indeed, trying to subvert the republic from within and establish personal rule, while retaining the outward forms of Constitutional governance. Which means that it would also be good for Zuma if journalists stopped applying this ill-omened epithet to him.

Sticking with matters of government, we now know that the long proposed programme to build a ‘fleet’ of nuclear power plants (NPPs) will start its procurement phase during the second quarter of the current government financial year – that is, during July, August and September. This procurement phase will see the country select one or more strategic partners to build the NPPs. This was stated in Parliament by Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson in her recent Budget Vote address.

She also stated that the programme would provide 9 600 MW of nuclear generating capacity, with the first “unit” (NPP? reactor?) being commissioned by 2023. Now, I strongly support nuclear power and I think South Africa should build new NPPs. Yet, these statements make me uneasy. Given the country’s probable economic growth in the coming decades, will 9 600 MW be required? The 2013 draft update of the Integrated Resource Plan 2010 (which contains the 9 600 MW nuclear figure, giving 2030 as the target date for achieving this) suggested that only 6 660 MW would be needed by 2030. This has been rejected by government, but no reasons have, as far as I am aware, been given for doing so. An unnecessarily large programme would, because of the costs it would impose on the country and people, actually pose a long-term threat to the future of nuclear energy in South Africa, by provoking a powerful backlash rooted in financial concerns.

Likewise, the reiteration of the 2023 commissioning date is most unwise. That is only eight years from now. There is no way the country can build and commission a new NPP, or even the first reactor of a new NPP, in the time available. It is a pretty safe bet that, assuming all goes well, the construction of the first NPP will take at least ten years, from sod-turning to commissioning. So, if a start was made today, the plant would be commissioned in 2025. But, of course, the start will not be made until next year, at the earliest. So we are actually looking at 2026 or 2027 as the earliest likely commissioning dates.

The reaffirmation of what many suspect is an excessive capacity target and what we all know to be an impossible commissioning target only makes government look foolish (and even incompetent). Government is only hurting itself. It should face reality and give credible estimates for future required nuclear capacity and commissioning dates.