South Africa risks becoming a failed state
MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita has warned that if South Africa does not act as a country to address the crises it faces, it risks becoming a failed nation-state.
“We have time, but the time is now to act very decisively around these crisis issues that the country is facing,” Mupita said.
These crises are energy, logistics, crime and corruption, and youth and unemployment, he said.
“With the state of disaster regulations being gazetted, the country now has a very unique opportunity to accelerate efforts to secure the resilience of critical national infrastructure such as telecommunications,” stated Mupita.
“In our view as MTN, government and business must jointly seize this moment and act decisively to deal with these crises.”
Mupita said that they expect sustained, elevated levels of load-shedding over the near-term.
As a consequence, MTN is going to move away from only using battery backups and mobile generator teams, to deploying extensive generators into the network.
Mupita is not the only one sounding the alarm.
Several business leaders, including Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala, Nedbank CEO Mike Brown, Discovery CEO Adrian Gore, and Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht expressed concerns over the crises Mupita highlighted.
Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt has said South Africa is in a real economic crisis that could lead to public violence.
“We are in serious trouble in South Africa,” Roodt said in a Business Day TV interview last month.
Data from The Outlier shows that South Africa has experienced 188 days of near-constant load-shedding since 6 September 2022, barring a few daytime hours of respite on a handful of Sundays.
EskomSePush data show that Eskom has already implemented 1,701 hours (or 71 days) of cumulative power cuts in 2023.
Vally Padayachee from the NRS Association of South Africa has warned that the country can go beyond stage 8 load-shedding if decisive steps are not taken to rectify Eskom’s problems.
The NRS Association is involved in developing electricity supply and load-shedding specifications in South Africa.
Padayachee’s warning comes after Eskom’s acting head of generation, Thomas Conradie, said they are revising the code of practice, which could extend its load-shedding schedule to stage 16.
Conradie did not explicitly state that they are preparing for stage 16 but confirmed they are working on higher stages than the current peak of stage 8.
“The schedules are being developed upfront so that we have a more systematic approach if required,” Conradie said.
He explained that it would avoid a situation where Eskom will need to “jump around” to reduce the load on the grid beyond stage 8.
Former Eskom executives have also warned about higher levels of load-shedding, especially as winter approaches.
Former Eskom CEO André de Ruyter has warned South Africans that 2023 is going to be a tough year for load-shedding.
He said South Africans should expect at least stage six power cuts, possibly worse, during winter.
Eskom’s former general manager of system operations, Robbie van Heerden, said South Africa would most likely go to stage 8 during winter.
“People must realise that South Africa is in a very bad situation. Load-shedding will not go away. It will not stop at the end of the year, as promised by Ramaphosa,” he said.
Now read: How much load-shedding cost MTN
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