There is plenty to cry about with regard to Zimbabwe. One of the engineers in our office is from Zimbabwe and so I regularly get updates on how things are in that country. By all accounts, there are car queues of some kilometres to buy fuel, electricity is on from 23:00 to 05:00, some firms are spending large sums on diesel fuel for generators, some companies are closing or have closed. There is rampant deforestation, poaching, air and water pollution (especially from agricultural and industrial runoffs) and soil erosion.

In times gone past, the South African President was good friends with Zimbabwe’s former President, Robert Mugabe. As a result, State-owned utility Eskom gave electricity to Zimbabwe for nearly nothing and made various dodgy arrangements for Zimbabwe to get electricity through Mozambique.

Now it may be that Eskom will deny this or the South African government will profess astonishment that it would ever ever be involved in something underhand but, let’s face it, that ship has sailed and is not coming back. The fact is that Eskom gave electricity to Zimbabwe for nearly nothing and this, in effect, gave the economy a double boost – firstly, it kept the industries and tourism going and, secondly, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority could sell the energy from South Africa, which allowed it to supplement and maintain its local generation facilities of about 1 600 MW, being largely hydropower and coal-fired power stations.

The import from South Africa is about 300 MW. Since the maximum demand of Zimbabwe is about 1 900 MW, all the above power has to be available to avoid outages. Having virtually free power from the Southern African Freedom Fighters pool was of great assistance to Zimbabwe. But now Eskom has pulled the plug (pun – ha!).

The result is the country is sliding further downwards. The questions are: How far will the country slide down? What can be done to restore the situation? The first question can be answered by comparison. The Republic of Congo (not the Democratic Republic of Congo) has virtually no power, at least not much outside Brazzaville, the capital city. In the city of Pointe Noire, there is only power generation by diesel generators. Water is delivered in large PVC containers. Sewage goes into soak pits. There is little commerce. There are self-contained hotels and supermarkets that are priced according to their services and the cost they incur for electricity. There are huge traffic jams and virtually no vehicles, save taxis in the forms of mini-buses and sedans. The roads have holes you drive into and out of. There are no working streetlights. All industries have their own generation. Currency is in the form of Central African francs (CAF), whose exchange rate is CAF560 to the dollar. US dollars are widely circulated and widely forged. So, Zimbabwe cannot get much worse than this. In fact, it can get better – the Zim expats send money from South Africa to Zimbabwe, so it’s not as bad as the Republic of Congo, which gets no money at all.

What can be done? The challenges are to get the power supply stable, to get people ready to pay for it and to become self-sufficient.

Eskom selling power to Zim is a long-term losing proposition. To end this dependence must be the long-term goal. The Zimbabwe government should sell off all its interests in selling power at low voltage (220/380 V) to private concerns that then can deal with getting people to pay and the problems of illegal connections without political interference. This will stabilise the Zimbabwe government’s income. Then Zimbabwe should build more power stations, of the order of 300 MW. Wind farms would be a waste of time but solar farms would be good. Instead of following the South African rampant corruption route, the country should forget about ‘bid windows’ and ‘bid offerings’. Just say to the private sector: “Build it and we will buy if the price is right”. Zimbabwe can be saved from its past history and the power supply is that beginning. Let’s hope.