People who have been taking note of the latest developments will know that the South African government has set up a programme whereby it is going to allow a group of selected people to resolve the State capture corruption issue.

Corrupt individuals have been identified and government has made notes of those who should be further investigated. Everything is programmed. Or so it seems. The full details can be found in the government programme dealing with the matter. A programme was presented by President Cyril Ramaphosa on October 23. The President spoke at length on the subject. The programme is interesting because it, if slightly alarming, shows an admission by government that things aren’t working out, and alarming because government admits that it is at fault.

I am not able to provide solutions to government problems, but I can provide some thoughts concerning government plans. If you have not already noticed, government has introduced loadshedding, generally twice a day for periods in excess of two hours. This is occurring nationally and, for those of you reading this in ten years’ time, please note that it is the first time in the history of Southern Africa that anything like this has ever happened. We have had, from time to time, power outages and interruptions, but never on this scale and not with this regularity.

The South African government is, or at least it says it is, going to stick to loadshedding for some period. Somehow, this will apparently solve the electricity deficit, but it’s not a cure – it’s merely treating a symptom. Loadshedding is a direct result of State capture, owing to maintenance funds being misappropriated and the outright flouting of tender processes. To solve this sort of problem, you have to bring people to book. Nothing that the President has said indicates he is planning to do this. He certainly made a list of how many people were guilty of what, but no indication was given of how many people were going to be arrested. He has grand plans to eliminate corruption in the future, but no plan to address the corruption of the past.

In the interim, we are all paying the price. The option that many have implemented is to acquire and install an alternative private power supply. However, this is only a solution for those businesses that can afford it. Those that cannot have to shut down for hours each day, which is hardly practical and leads to the loss of production and jobs.

People have to realise that the problem can’t be solved by interrupting power at the domestic level by turning off the power to houses twice a day. We have to address the issue much higher up. We also have to take away any solution to the problem from the municipalities, because they are ruthlessly self-serving.

There is also the huge problem that government is going to declare a solution and pay for it and use that money to assist the ruling party in winning the next election. To my knowledge, that’s never been done before, but there’s always a first time.

The solution, as it very often does, lies in the private sector. In the short term, we have run out of electricity. South Africa cannot run without electricity for any length of time; therefore, a solution must be found for South Africa to have an electrical supply free from government and free from the existing electrical supply, whatever the costs that have to be paid. This will be very expensive, to begin with, but it will keep the power system operating in a smooth fashion and ultimately it will become financially viable.

This has been done before, although not recently, and not at a location which will be familiar to anybody. However, it is possible for an expensive power system to be installed and for it ultimately to become viable. Since I don’t know the alternatives, I’m not going to say where it occurred, but you would be surprised if you knew.