A small crisis was brewing in business circles during Thursday. First the Namibia Manufacturers Association put out a very legitimate notice based on Nampower's Tuesday press conference, stating what sort of electricity problems we could expect in future. This mail circulated widely and people took note. Then on Thursday, somehow, an e-mail purporting to originate from Nampower started circulating indicating a so-called load shed schedule. This cast the cat amongst the pigeons. Both at Megabuild and Agra, there was a sudden frenzy of people wanting to buy power generators, to the extent that I was told stocks eventually ran out.

Later on during Thursday, a more sober mail claimed the load shed schedule was a hoax and that no power cuts were to be expected in Namibia. That may be so but the load shed spreadsheet is simply too detailed to be the figment on some wacko's imagination. Still later, in another mail, someone claimed the load shed spreadsheet was leaked on purpose. I would not know if that is so.
When we started telling Namibians, several years ago, that an energy crunch was on its way, Eskom's learned and flashy spokesperson, one Fani Zulu, called us up here in Windhoek, telling us we were talking nonsense and our only intent was to discredit Eskom and upset the market.
Well, we do not need to discredit Eskom any more, they have succeeded beyond all expectation to discredit themselves magnificently, and I also do not think we need to upset the market; it is already as upset as you can get.
Eskom's problems started some ten years ago, when an aggressive Affirmative Action plan ensured that all its white, competent engineers and managers basically said “We have had enough”, and went into very lucrative positions outside the state utility's sphere or simply emigrated. The new Eskom policy was quick to replace skilled people with all sorts of Jack-knows-what bullshitters as long as they were black. The end results is what we have had to endure the past month, and which has now progressed to the stage where an embarrassed Nampower management has to forward Eskom emails to inform us when and where the darkness will descend.