South Africa: Restoring Eskom - What's Making It Ill?

analysis

Mention the word Eskom and the standard response, once the eye-rolling and hair pulling is over, is near-unanimous cries of "restructure the monopoly! Break it up! Involve the private sector!" After all, who could argue that Eskom is not a huge carbuncle inside an increasingly dysfunction state? By the same token, however, who could argue that the private sector has not failed?

Just consider the three scourges everyone agrees are destroying South Africa: poverty, unemployment and inequality. And, lest anyone should think that these blights are uniquely South African, it is sobering to reflect that uniqueness would rather lie in a contemporary capitalist country not suffering these ills, in one way or other.

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