COP27 loves ‘dear Cyril’

There’s a silver lining to the most ominous climate change cloud. President Cyril Ramaphosa handed over his clean energy investment plan to funders at COP27 in Egypt this week.

For the leader of a troubled nation who may soon be deposed by his own party and is under threat of a criminal investigation, it was a rare moment of pleasure. Ramaphosa, whose greatest skills are drawing up plans and looking imposingly presidential, was in his element.

The European Union, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the US have pledged R150 billion to his five-year plan, mostly in the form of concessional loans. The tone, although diplomatic, was that the developing world in general and Africa, specifically, was entitled to redress in the form of nonrepayable grants, rather than burdensome loans.

It remains to be seen whether the Western nations will be inclined to abandon funding mechanisms that Ramaphosa describes as carrying “onerous costs and conditionalities”, in favour of largesse. COP27 did, however, deliver some good public relations.

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The EU’s Ursula von der Leyden gushed on Twitter, congratulating “dear Cyril” for his brilliance, while there were plenty of photo opportunities of hand-clasping daisy chains with the UK’s Rishi Sunak, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz and the US’ John Kerry.

Ramaphosa will appreciate the warmth with which he was received. It is a reminder to his fractious party he has international stature that his challengers would struggle to match. However, at home, the transition to a green utopia looks as unlikely as his improbably promise four years ago of a new dawn.

Two reports this week highlight the vast gap that exists between plans and realities. Eskom released its latest statutory assessment of the power system which showed that, even under the best-case scenario, it would be unable to meet the electricity needs of the country over the next five years.

The other reality check came from market research company Yazi, which released a survey that showed the crushing effect power cuts have had on informal traders. It found that more than 89% of them believed that continued blackouts “will lead to a national uprising, including acts of chaos, increasing strikes and looting”. The danger of violence sparked by erratic power supplies is not confined to the informal sector.

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On Monday, residents of Witbank’s Emalahleni municipality, who have been without electricity for six weeks because of a damaged transformer and were told that they wouldn’t have power until after Christmas, ran amock. They torched a shopping mall and looted shops. The police allegedly shot one person dead.

There is also the intractable problem of a culture of nonpayment for services. Nationwide, more than 50% of the electricity bought by municipalities is subsequently not paid for by residents. In Soweto, less than one in five of residents pay their bills and the township is responsible for R7 billion owed to Eskom.

A couple of years back, Ramaphosa said South Africans needed to end the “culture of nonpayment”. The following year, Eskom wrote off R8 billion in Soweto debt. Last week, Ramaphosa told parliament nonpayment was “unacceptable”.

He hinted, in response to a call by the Gauteng premier for another Eskom amnesty for Soweto, this was an option. This is a politically opportunistic and monumentally stupid idea under the best of circumstances.

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That the president would even countenance it, hard on the heels of passing round the begging bowl at COP27, is unfathomable.