The Sunday Mail
Garikai Mazara Sunday Debate
For all the claims that we are one of, if not the most, literate country in Africa, we should have been ashamed the other week when a whole Permanent Secretary in a certain ministry stood in front of the nation to blame the national power crisis on geysers. Electric domestic geysers, and not industrial electric boilers. Like seriously?
Just the idea of banning electric geysers must have been laughable, just laughable as might have been the kind of power to be saved – 300MW (which could be a power station in its own right) – never mind that this saving is said to be over a five-year-period.
At a power rating of 3 000W, the washing machine consumes more power than a geyser, which has a power rating of 2 500W. So after banning geysers, what would be our next target? Washing machines? Anything with a power rating over and above a geyser? An air conditioner has a rating of 3 500W.
What makes the geyser ban all the more laughable is that whilst we want to portray to the world that we are educated, of which sure we are, we are also stupid. Insanely stupid. This conclusion, of us being collectively stupid and inane, you come to it after you consider all the blueprints that we have done over the years, all meant to make good our country.
The simple conclusion is that we are a nation good at policy formulation but a total wreck when it comes to implementation. For instance, the power crisis that is dogging us now, was long “prophesised” by those schooled in seeing the future. Given that our population is ever-growing, it goes without saying that all the attendant facets of social life have to be constantly revamped to meet the ever-growing demand.
Many of those who are old enough will remember the energetic Peter Pamire and how he ran around, and that was in 1996, to fund-raise for the hosting of the first-ever World Solar Summit.
Almost 20 years later, Zimbabwe is yet to have a single solar farm. South Africa, which was coming out of the dark days of apartheid then, has since made incredible strides in making solar energy an alternative source of power, and has a number of solar farms to its name.
Ok, never mind the World Solar Summit. Even 17 years later, in 2013, when we decided to float a public tender for the installation of a solar farm, two years down the line that tender is still shrouded in mystery and Government bungling. The lead time for a solar project of the magnitude that was envisaged in Gwanda is anything between six and nine months.
All this is coming from the country with the highest literacy rate in Africa. My foot!
Let’s re-examine the Perm Sec’s geyser ban: how are we going to model it? Door-to-door inspection? Willing-buyer-willing-installer scenario? Never mind that we are in the middle of an economic crunch! Talking of which, what have been the concessionary arrangements that have been put in place to make solar attractive and a cheaper option?
Have we put in place the modalities of assembling, forget manufacturing, the solar panels? Remember we also have a promise to create a certain number of jobs? Or we are going for the easier and simpler route: “let’s import guys, after all we have been importing the damn gadgets!” Or better still, there is already a huge stockpile of the solar geysers, waiting to win the tender to replace all the domestic electrical ones?
The present power crisis has not manifested overnight, it has always been known and it was envisaged that at one point we were to be hit by such a scenario, but in typical Zimbabwe-style, we were lackadaisical in our approach. Until the Zambezi River dried up!
The drying up of the Zambezi River brings in an interesting aspect: what if it doesn’t rain well this coming rain season? Well, to support this fear there already has been talk of El Nino, which brings a mixture of fortunes across weather fronts. It is forecast that for Southern Africa, El Nino will cast doom – drought.
But then again, even if it rains, the Zambezi River Authority has been honest enough, that it will take up till March for the rains to have any significant impact on the hydrological cycle of the Zambezi River, by which time Zesa, our dear Zesa, will be starting on its winter load shedding schedule. Poor, educated Zimbabweans!
Which makes the situation quite a “between a rock and hard place” scenario. Because the power crisis that the country is facing has no short-term solution. Even if we start building thermal power stations like tomorrow, the earliest we can expect returns from that kind of investment is 18 months. But it doesn’t mean that we should not start building.
The same goes for hydro-electric generation, this is not an overnight solution. Neither is it a two-cent proposal.
Which leaves solar our main focus. At a national level, what is needed is commitment from Government, the resolve to solve the country’s omnipresent power crisis, it is time that Government has to come to the table and play its part. And show that it is keen on attracting investment. And investment does not come into the dark!
An aggressive approach to establish five solar farms, each with a target to produce, say 150MW, will result in 750MW in the next six to nine months. By the same time next year, we will have added, rather mitigated, the power crisis that is currently obtaining. If the same model is done over a 10-year period, we will end up having excess power.
But then again, we are an educated and very literate country. High on dreams and short on delivery.
There have been arguments about our power tariffs, that our tariffs are not competitive, hence the so-called independent power producers are not willing to produce power at a cost and sell it for a loss. This whole argument centres around the monopoly that Zesa holds over power generation, distribution, transmission and pricing.
Probably the most literate above us see Zesa as so strategic to the national cause that they cannot let it go or open it up to competition. National security will obviously be cited. But we all remember too well how the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) at one time was “mythed” to hold national security at its core. Until it failed to deliver on its mandate such that the non-delivery almost became the threat to national security.
I foresee the same with Zesa, we are holding on to a rogue parastatal, that has become a power unto itself, plunging the nation into darkness, that what we thought would be a national security threat by opening it up to competition, will actually become a national security threat by its non-delivery. The most literate African citizens have endured darkness for too long that they are asking whether it is logical to keep Zesa in its present format.
The National Oil Company of Zimbabwe, which has since been renamed National Oil Infrastructure Company of Zimbabwe, was opened up to competition and today it is running what is seemingly a healthy fuel supply business profile across the country, competing with many private players. And the boom that has been witnessed in the fuel supply chain is for all to see. Competition is healthy, after all. So if we draw lessons from NOCZIM, we might see the light at the end of Zesa’s darkness.
As you read this, probably with the aid of a candle, what we need from the most literate Perm Sec on the continent are solutions to our debilitating power crisis, not some laughable ban on electrical gadgets.
Then as I was to finish this, I remembered: we once said we discovered massive deposits of natural gas in Lupane? Didn’t we? Cry my beloved Zimbabwe.
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