South Africa’s load-shedding crisis has seemingly moved from Eskom’s coal-fired power stations to municipal distribution networks, principally in townships. Chronically under-resourced municipalities, whose funding model was originally outlined in the 1998 White Paper on Local Government, are unable to cope with the increasing demand for infrastructure upgrades necessary to end load-shedding in municipalities.
So now we have what is called ‘load reduction’.
Load reduction is a long-established process that Eskom uses in specific areas when there is sufficient electricity available, but a transformer’s integrity is at risk due to overloading, whereas load-shedding is used when the national grid is constrained and there is not sufficient capacity to generate electricity to meet demand.
Today, suburban South Africans experience uninterrupted electricity provision while life for people in townships and rural villages largely remains the same: electricity shutoffs are a constant.
The full cost recovery model
On the horizon is a protracted campaign against the South African working class to penalise those connecting illegally through load reduction and disconnection blitzkriegs.
According to Eskom’s spokesperson, Daphne Mokwena, the utility is no longer simply replacing damaged transformers in distribution networks when they are overloaded. Following investigations, they have concluded that illegal connections are the culprit for this damage. They say they must, therefore, conduct audits to determine where illegal connections are being made and the extent of them. Subsequently, these audits will result in removing households with illegal connections from the grid. Underneath it all, this strategy at play is informed by the need for Eskom and municipalities to recover costs from households and private enterprises. The alternative, of course, would be to recover it from taxation.
Municipalities have based their funding model on recovering their costs from customer payments while at the same time providing free services for those who are unable to pay. In South Africa’s socioeconomic context, with the highest unemployment rate in the world, these contradictory mandates have proved disastrous. Municipalities are unable to provide basic services. Funding for municipalities was based on the understanding that electricity was to account for the largest share of the operating expenses recovered from service payments. In order to try to cope with these competing directives, municipalities must then double down on cost recovery by consistently increasing service rates for residents.
Burdened by the unemployment crisis and with austerity measures increasing the cost of living, working-class people are now forced to pay electricity rates reaching R3 per kWh in some cases.
Load reduction for the poor
Then, the load-shedding crisis came and induced wealthy and suburban households to move increasingly off-grid by installing rooftop solar. This reduced the paying customer base, requiring municipalities to further increase their rates. This has become an unrelenting strain on working-class households. This is what drives the working class in townships to pay to install illegal connections (izinyoka), so that they can afford other basic necessities. Municipalities are now experiencing their cash cow and electricity payments as a candle burning at both ends.
Then, the load-shedding crisis came and induced wealthy and suburban households to move increasingly off-grid by installing rooftop solar. This reduced the paying customer base, requiring municipalities to further increase their rates.
Falling under Operation Vulindlela, the Presidency’s National Electricity Crisis Committee (NECOM) has a work stream on demand-side management. It has resolved to manage the current phase of this crisis by implementing control measures to eliminate illegal connections and ensure residents (customers) pay for their electricity. According to the Minister of Electricity, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, “Necom will run an aggressive demand-side management campaign aimed at reducing demand on the grid. It is possible to reduce demand by 1,000MW and reduce load shedding by one stage through simple measures”.
On the horizon is a protracted campaign against the South African working class to penalise those connecting illegally through load reduction and disconnection blitzkriegs.
According to the report Energy Racism, conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research and Practice (CSRP) based at the University of Johannesburg, load reduction is a practice for use predominantly in townships. The report also asserts that power shutoffs in townships during load reduction can last for days or months at a time in some cases. Disinvestment in infrastructure, which is ageing and poorly maintained in townships, is forcing working-class South Africans to suffer the consequences of neoliberal governance amidst the legacies of apartheid. It is a means of recovering a diminishing source of income for Eskom and municipalities. And more importantly it is a mechanism of control to further establish the ethos and ‘discipline’ of a market economy amongst the predominantly black working class of South Africa.
In 1999, post-soviet Georgia was in the middle of a transition from a bureaucratically planned economy to one of a capitalist market, with the introduction of neoliberal reforms. In this process, the Georgian government sold its electric utility, Telasi, to a company based in the United States called AES Corporation — the largest electric power company in the world at the time. Under the auspices of AES, the utility began a mass electricity shutoff campaign, obliging Georgians to pay for electricity to reconnect. This resulted in widespread protests and riots by citizens to reject the disconnections, which disproportionately affected lower-income households. The transition to a capitalist market economy required citizens by force to pay for electricity. Previously, when Georgia was a part of the Soviet Union, they could either access electricity for free or it was heavily subsidised.
Load reduction is not an altogether new phenomenon historically, and it is also not a purely technical issue. It is a political-economic tool, a violent one, to change people’s attitudes and behaviours toward electricity, which is a key requirement for social reproduction, and to view it as a commodity that must be bought and sold. It is a means of oppression which undermines the basis of social welfare policies, like free basic electricity, that are intended to enable working-class people to transcend their condition. It pushes those without the means to pay, which puts them in a situation where they are now even less capable of meeting their everyday needs.
It is also true that confronting energy poverty has become a key lever to address meaningful socioeconomic development for the working class in South Africa. Tracy Ledger and Mahlatse Rampedi, in their report Hungry for Electricity, argue for a minimum threshold level of consumption of at least 350 kWh per month, preferably at no cost, for the poor and unemployed to provide a sufficient amount of food for their households and to engage in other activities that would enable other economic activities that would increase people’s standard of living. Shifting the costs of services and infrastructural development from households to public funding through taxation would not only enable Eskom and municipalities to end load reduction. It would also be a monumental improvement in living conditions for South Africa’s working class. And it would put electricity supply where it belongs — as a public good rather than as a commodity like any other.
A historical precedent
When we experience load reduction, we are also at the mercy of capitalism’s conditioning of the South African working class, which extends back to the early days of European colonial expansion. Today we must pay for these services or face load reduction. Long ago, South Africans were similarly forced into work by taxation and ‘land reduction’. This is evidenced in the 1897 testimony at a commission of inquiry from George Albu:
“Commission: Suppose the k****** [black Africans] retire back to their kraal [cattle pen] [sic]? Would you be in favour of asking the Government to enforce labour?
Albu: Certainly … I would make it compulsory … Why should a n****** be allowed to do nothing? I think a k****** should be compelled to work in order to earn his living.
Commission: If a man can live without work, how can you force him to work?
Albu: Tax him, then …”
It brought Africans into the cash economy, where they began to supply their labour to farms and mines or sell cash crops to pay taxes. In settler economies in Southern Africa, people were dispossessed of their land and moved to semi-arid and unproductive lands. In these labour reserves, Africans had few ways to earn a living but to work for wages.
Today, they are being given little choice – pay for electricity or go without.
Over time, racial capitalism squeezes its grip tighter and tighter on the South African working class, first expropriating land and enforcing work, then separating Black people in townships and homelands before fully integrating them into a capitalist market economy. In this way, capitalist social organisation in the arc of history becomes more ‘natural’ and self-evident, the enemy becomes less visible, and a liberatory pathway becomes all the more challenging to organise.
Tony Martel is a PhD Candidate in Development Studies at Nelson Mandela University and works on the Transition Township Project in KwaZakhele, Gqeberha.
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