Lies, damn lies and statistics: Zuma heralds a new dawn to a benighted nation
19 February 2015
Even without the major distractions of Julius Malema and his fellow Economic Freedom Fighters being violently evicted from Parliament, the Democratic Alliance walking out in sympathy and cellphone signals being jammed, listeners would probably have struggled to make complete sense of President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address on the vexed question of electricity.
That was probably the intention. Coming in the middle of rolling nationwide blackouts from Eskom, power - or impotence - was clearly going to be a politically sensitive issue. Which is perhaps why Zuma emitted what seemed to be a large and bewildering ink cloud of impressive-sounding statistics about the volume of new electricity that his administration had added, or was planning to add, to the national grid.
Tallying up to an impressive total of 50 000 MW of electricity, this included 4 000 megawatts (MW) from independent power producers, using renewable sources; 3 900 MW of renewable energy; 10 000 MW from the three new power stations; 2 600 MW of hydro-electric capacity to be sourced from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and 9 600 MW from the fleet of new nuclear power stations that the government is exploring, which the United States (US), South Korea, Russia, France and China are preparing to bid for. Of the 48 000 MW that will be generated by the Grand Inga Hydro-electrical Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zuma said South Africa would have access to 15 000 MW.
On paper, then, we are soon to wake from Eskom's long dark night to a brilliant dawn. Yet there were many devils in the details of this list, as consulting electrical engineer Terry Mackenzie-Hoy pointed out. He recently told Africa Check that Zuma's claim that three new power stations Kusile, Medupi and Ingula, would add 10 000 MW to the national grid was ‘somewhat misleading'. This was because Ingula, in the Drakensberg, is a pump-storage scheme, not a power station. It stores water to be released through its hydro-electric turbines to relieve the grid in peak load times, and so does not contribute to South Africa's base-load capacity. He added, however, that Kusile and Medupi would add 9 564 MW to base-load capacity, so Zuma's 10 000 MW claim was only 436 MW out.