SOWETAN | Exemption ruling a wake-up call

Ordinarily, any move or an order to ensure that people receive much-needed state services would be welcome.

Although welcome and probably in the spirit of the Constitution, the ruling by the Pretoria high court last Friday ordering the government to ensure that public schools, hospitals and other healthcare facilities as well as police stations are exempted from load shedding, the debilitating power outages, power utility Eskom says, are necessary to avoid a total collapse of the grid.

Such a collapse, energy experts have warned, would prove more devastating than anything imaginable and would be a destructive force from which the country may never recover.

Back to the ruling, which the court ordered be implemented within 60 days, the government was also urged to “take all reasonable steps... to ensure that there shall be sufficient supply or generation of electricity to prevent any interruption of supply as a result of load shedding”. In other words, the state is obliged to provide alternative power sources at the aforementioned places in the event of load shedding.

We cannot even begin to imagine the headache trying to adhere to the court ruling is causing powers that be, given the seemingly impracticality of such a mission. For starters, schools, hospitals, clinics and police stations and similar institutions are by their very nature embedded in the areas where people live. How then does anyone isolate them from the power sources, i.e the grid, serving their communities? Nigh impossible, we imagine.

While we understand the predicament of the department of public enterprises under whose jurisdiction Eskom falls and therefore see reason in minister Pravin Gordhan’s declared intent to appeal the court ruling, it may well also be a case of the proverbial chickens coming home to roost for the government.

Not too long ago news made the rounds that the department of public works had spent upwards of R70m to provide alternative power sources such as generators and solar panels to insulate cabinet members as well as deputy ministers and other “honourables” from Eskom blackouts.

It seemed there was no shortage of political will to keep the home fires burning for ministers at the taxpayer’s expense then. Many would therefore ask for a repeat of that enthusiasm now to meet the demands of the ruling. 

Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”