Eskom’s troubles are mounting and with it ours. With almost nine hours of outage (for some even more) in a single day it is almost impossible for especially small businesses, on which we pin our hopes for job creation, to operate. The state power utility yesterday escalated load shedding from Stage 2 to Stage 4 until Friday to ration the remaining emergency generation reserves, which it said have been utilised extensively as it was not getting the reduction in demand as expected from implementing Stage 2 load shedding. The utility already warned over the weekend that it was running worryingly low on diesel.
The latest bout of rolling power cuts follows a “major incident” in Zambia that affected power supply from Cahora Bassa, with breakdowns at several power stations contributing to the dire situation.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told the country yesterday that he’s been informed that some of the unplanned breakdowns were linked to negligence. Admitting that the biggest risk is that Eskom is largely our single generator of electricity, he said if there’s anything that keeps him awake at night, it’s Eskom. And all of us! But we need answers on a fix, fast, if we want a fighting chance to stem the jobs bloodbath that has already condemned one in five South Africans to live in extreme poverty!
Economists warned that the country could shed as much as 350,000 jobs this year after already losing a million due to rolling blackouts.
The President is pinning his hopes on the fourth annual South Africa Investment Conference set to take place in March next year to attract significant international funding to the energy sector in particular – “investments that will help us overcome the debilitating load shedding as new electricity generation capacity comes online”.
Meanwhile, if you want to cure your Eskom headache by going off grid, be prepared to fork out tens of thousands of rand for gas, solar panels and power storage systems among other things.
In the markets, the rand testing the R14.90-level against the US dollar has paved the way for a push to R14.80/$. “One of the main reasons for the pullback in the rand has been the weaker dollar overnight. We expect the good momentum to continue in the short term ahead of the MTBPS [mini budget] on Thursday. Importers should look to levels below R14.80 to start looking at buying dollars again,” comments TreasuryONE.
Commodities have lost some steam in the Asian session this morning, with gold trading at $1,823, platinum at $1,049 and palladium at $2,051 per ounce respectively, according to the forex trading house. Brent Crude was flat at $83.29 per barrel.
Here’s a roundup of the world’s top and most interesting headlines:
SA Business
City of Johannesburg’s R280-million real estate deal ‘crime scene’ – Daily Maverick
How South Africans could pay R200 less per tank of petrol – MyBroadband
SA will not sign COP26 parallel pledge to move away from coal, says Environment Minister Creecy – Daily Maverick
Global Business
Bubble fears are rising as financial conditions flash boom times – Bloomberg
COP26: UK government gives £210m backing for mini nuclear reactors to hit net zero ‘more quickly’ – Sky News
Elon Musk’s Neuralink begins brain chip tests on pigs – SCMP
Technology
Cybersecurity firm McAfee to be sold for more than $14bn – AFP
Original Apple computer built by Jobs and Wozniak to be auctioned – AFP
Virgin Galactic has sold 100 more space tickets – AFP
Markets
Asian markets rise after Wall St record – AFP
Dollar wavers with inflation looming as next test for rates – Reuters
‘Fast money’ drives Bitcoin, ether to new record highs – Reuters
Opinion/In-depth
Executive remuneration: The quandary of rewarding bosses for going green – Daily Maverick
A forensic analysis of Elon Musk’s Twitter poll on Tesla stock – TNW
Farmers vs pharmacists: How South Africa’s ivermectin use slips through the cracks – Daily Maverick
Video
It needs to be restructured: Ramaphosa on the future of Eskom – EWN
Musk polls Twitter on selling 10% of his Tesla stock – Reuters
(And his tweeps have spoken: Musk should sell $21bn Tesla stake. Meanwhile, Musk’s brother Kimbal made nearly $110m by exercising his Tesla stock options right before the Edge Lorde Elon turned to Twitter for advice on whether he should sell a big chunk of his stake in the electric-vehicle company.)
Why did world leaders choose Glasgow for climate conference? – Newsy
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