The latest electricity price hike of 14.6% will hit the poor hard – as usual – but in fact it is the least of their worries.
Despite South Africa’s sunny and windy climate, and the availability of huge areas of deserted land where wind and solar power farms could be erected, the ruling party is continuing its love affair with the Russian, French and Chinese nuclear corporations currently trying to sell us their nuclear power stations. Once the poor get saddled with the interest and repayment costs for the R1 trillion the ANC will borrow to pay for these power stations, a 14.6% electricity price hike will seem like a walk in the park.
Both the ruling party and the official opposition are using the poor and working class as their punching bag. The DA is, as usual crying crocodile tears over the 14.6% electricity price increase. It is opportune for the DA to loudly lament every year that electricity prices will “hurt the poor” even while remaining blindly fixated on their outdated ideological position that Eskom should be privatised.
