Harare — THE country plunged into an unprecedented nationwide power failure on two separate days this week, throwing the entire economy into turmoil.

It was not the magnitude of the blackouts that was strange; it was the deafening silence from ZESA Holdings and its principals who should be called to account for the disaster.

Across the border in South Africa, there has been an outcry over brief power outages. Yet President Thabo Mbeki saw it fit to personally apologise to South African citizens for the "minor" power crisis, and to admit his government was wrong when it turned down advice from its power utility, Eskom, to inject more capital into the creation of new power plants that could have mitigated the crisis.

Perhaps the tragedy in this country is that long-suffering Zimbabweans have ceased to be a complaining lot, and have become despondent and resigned to their fate.

But that does not grant public officers the right to abuse and show scant regard for the welfare of citizens and businesses operating in this volatile and frail economy.

Zimbabweans received no apology from ZESA, whose key operations have been obscured by convoluted subsidiary dealings in agriculture and exports, as well as mining projects, which diverted them from key areas of business but yielded too little or nothing to justify the spree.

There was neither an apology nor an explanation of the crisis from the Zimbabwe Electricity Regulatory Commission. It was also business as usual for Energy Minister Michael Nyambuya.

Government has for a very long time ignored pleas from key stakeholders to increase investment towards power generation.

It was known much earlier that traditional sources of power imports would dry up in 2007 because of increasing demand for electricity in regional countries, resulting in those countries having no surplus power to export to Zimbabwe.

Yet very little or nothing meaningful was done to boost domestic power output. In fact, Engineer Simba Mangwengwende had to be managed out of ZESA for steering the power utility on the correct path.

The country is lucky that despite the gloomy regional power supply situation, Mozambique can still export at most 300MW of electricity to Zimbabwe, despite strong competition from deep-pocketed neighbours.

Yet ZESA has always been stuck with overdue invoices for power imports, and has often had to be cut off by suppliers to pay up its dues.

ZESA can possibly generate up to 1 110MW from its various power plants out of a potential capacity of 1 680MW.

Yet electricity generation at ZESA's power plants is a far cry from the ideal output thresholds.

Power demand for peak periods during the year has often run into 2 000MW during certain months -- like in June and July last year - despite the fact that most industrial concerns are operating at between 30 and 40 percent capacity.

As far back as 2000, ZESA recommended to government that it should hive off a 50 percent stake in both Hwange and Kariba South power stations to private investors, raise US$600 million from the disposal and boost the country's electricity generating capacity.

Proceeds from the privatisation were earmarked for expansion projects at the Hwange and Kariba South power stations, as well as to retire ZESA's external debts and facilitate other power generation investments.

While overtures were made to court international investors for the deals, no transactions have up to now been made because of government bickering and political fears that Zimbabwe could lose its family silverware.

But the two plants continue to deteriorate because of lack of maintenance and spares.

Government has only encouraged piecemeal deals that have done very little to transform the beleaguered power utility's fortunes.

ZESA signed a deal in January last year with Turbo Engineering of Russia for a US$150 million joint venture, facilitating the creation of 17 mini-hydro electricity power plants across the country. The utility also signed in 2004 a memorandum of understanding with China National Aero Technology Import and Export for the injection of US$600 million towards the renovation of Hwange Power Station.

Talks were held early last year for a Build Operate and Transfer arrangement.

The utility also entered into several agreements for the refurbishment of its power plants with Indian, Malaysian and Iranian investors, with very little to show for the deals, some of them riding on government-to-government cooperation agreements.

Recently, ZESA signed a US$40 million deal with Namibia's NamPower for the refurbishment of the Hwange Thermal Power Plant, terms of which included a firm power supply agreement under which NamPower started receiving cheap electricity from Hwange this month, despite chronic shortages in Zimbabwe.

Clearly, it is the lack of commitment on the part of those responsible that has plunged us into the current chaos.

The fact that they do not feel accountable to the general population has enabled them to ride roughshod on the people, disregarding their mandates.

But, certainly, this attitude cannot continue.