Darlene Creamer

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Darlene Creamer

LONG SHADOW

19th January 2024 It is difficult to argue against the principles underpinning the National Health Insurance Bill, approved by lawmakers late last year. As with all legislative interventions, however, the devil is truly in the detail. On this score, the Bill fails to offer assurances in the areas of affordability,... →

NOWHERE TO HIDE

15th December 2023 2023 has been a difficult year for South Africans. Besides being the worst-ever year yet for growth-sapping and jobs-destroying loadshedding, the years of corruption and mismanagement at Transnet are now being felt not only in the collapse of the rail service on key corridors, but in a port... →

GRIEF & ANGER

8th December 2023 The most recent bout of Stage 6 loadshedding by Eskom was not only a reminder that South Africa is far away from truly tackling the scourge, with the current focus on fixing Eskom in preference to adding new capacity proving itself, yet again, to be a high-risk strategy. It was also a tipping... →

COSTLY CONGESTION

1st December 2023 The pile-up of ships outside South African ports is a costly reminder of the risks associated with mismanagement and corruption at a State-owned monopoly. Some vessels have been left at anchorage for more than two weeks, leading to the imposition of congestion charges and various other direct and... →

UNJUST EXECUTIONER

24th November 2023 While politicians often have an uncomfortable relationship with the truth, there was once a time when their commentary at least arose from a common set of facts. No longer. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula is but one of a growing list of politicians using some of the “alternative facts” that... →

FESTIVE CARTON

17th November 2023 With millions of chickens having been killed over the past few months in response to an outbreak of avian flu, supplies of eggs have run low and prices have spiked. So precious have eggs become that some may well be hoping for a carton or two as relatives and friends break out their purses in a... →

FIGHTING FIRES

10th November 2023 As has been the case for several years and with several of his predecessors, South Africa’s poor growth rate continues to act as the main constraint in enabling Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to release the resources needed to ensure social fairness, while maintaining fiscal balance. Until the... →

FOUR THE PEOPLE

3rd November 2023 Given how divisive both rugby and the Springboks were in the not-so-distant past, it is quite remarkable that the national team has become such a unifying force when divisions are growing in so many other areas. During what turned out to be a most stressful tournament for South African... →

DOG WHISTLER

27th October 2023 With no sense of irony, Minerals Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe continues to champion gas exploration and development while fighting internal Cabinet power struggles using the analogy of the warning that mice offer when running away from dangerous levels of methane underground.... →

RED CARD

20th October 2023 The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), which is meant to support workers who lose their jobs, stands accused of serious foul play, with organised business and labour having both called for the fund to be placed under immediate administration. Besides alleged operational dysfunction, there is also... →

FALLING SHORT

13th October 2023 The day after the National Development Plan was officially launched on August 15, 2012, was one of the darkest in South Africa’s history and the darkest since the advent of democracy. On August 16, 2012, 34 miners were shot and killed in what became known as the Marikana Massacre. The period... →

EXTREME FORECAST

6th October 2023 As South Africa’s 2024 election approaches, the is a huge incentive for the incumbents to ramp-up spending and to announce new projects and initiatives. The problem they have this time round is that there is insufficient money available to sustain existing programmes, let alone embark on new... →

PRESSURE COOKER

29th September 2023 South Africa’s national accounts are facing pressures from every angle. With growth still flatlining on the back of extreme loadshedding, a collapse in freight rail and many municipal services, revenue collection is naturally underperforming. Borrowing has been ramped up to compensate at a time... →

TRAIN WRECK

22nd September 2023 The collapse in the performance of Transnet is well documented. The State-owned freight logistics group has been left broke and broken and there are growing indications that it too will be seeking some form of bail-out at some point. However, given that government’s fiscal buffers have also all... →

IRRESISTIBLE FORCE PARADOX

15th September 2023 With elections looming, the governing party is unlikely to want to pull in its spending horns. However, the National Treasury is warning that it needs to do just that to avoid a looming debt crisis. In a letter seen by Sunday Times, the department outlined several drastic spending reduction steps... →

SANDS OF TIME

8th September 2023 The Koeberg life-extension project is running years late and, with ongoing contractor claims, its final budget remains uncertain. For the nuclear plant to operate beyond July 2024, many more physical and licence-compliance steps are still required, including the separation of the unit licences to... →

RELUCTANT REFORMER

1st September 2023 Government continually finds reasons, real and imagined, for failing to follow through with the structural reforms that have been identified as urgent to place the country on a growth pathway. The most recent high-profile delay has related to the mishandling of the Electricity Regulation... →

HEAT IS ON

25th August 2023 The Copernicus Climate Change Service has confirmed July to have been the hottest month on record, with a global average temperature of 16.95°C surpassing the previous record set in 2019 by 0.33°C. July is estimated to have been about 1.5°C warmer than the average for 1850 to 1900. In several... →

UPHILL STRUGGLE

18th August 2023 While Some Eskom coal power stations are operating more stably and various private generation projects are offering some relief, loadshedding continues to weigh down the real economy. Manufacturers, farmers and miners don’t only face production disruptions but those reliant on domestic sales are... →

STOP GAP

11th August 2023 In many of Gauteng’s affluent suburbs it has become common to see banners highlighting resident-funded works programmes to fix potholes, cut grass and repair pavements. At a national level, similar schemes have developed around the country’s power, logistics and crime crises. As with the suburban... →

EXPLOSIVE DECLINE

4th August 2023 Residents and businesses that fall within the boundaries of the City of Johannesburg have always known that the council’s old slogan ‘a world-class African city’ was more aspirational than factual. Nevertheless, the recent explosion below Lilian Ngoyi Street (formerly Bree Street), which killed... →

BURNING PLATFORM

28th July 2023 The torching of more than 20 trucks in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga brought back nasty memories of the July 2021 riots, which shook South Africa to its core. The motives are not immediately clear, but it appears that the actions go beyond toxic xenophobia and mafia-style muscle flexing... →

ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

21st July 2023 Much of the hostility between Twitter’s Elon Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ahead of the launch of Meta’s Threads tended to combine toxic masculinity with ego-fuelled bravado, epitomised by the cage-fight challenge. In the world of social media – or should that read anti-social media – the... →

DESTRUCTIVE FORCE

14th July 2023 Whether it was a tornado or a landspout the strong winds associated with the recent weather phenomenon that hit Inanda and Phoenix, in KwaZulu-Natal, left a deadly trial of destruction in its wake. As with the climate crisis, which is leading to more frequent and extreme weather events, South... →

BREAKING POINT

7th July 2023 In the years preceding the start of the loadshedding crisis in 2007, electricity commentators would regularly warn that the distribution sector was emerging as South Africa’s weakest link. That reality was masked by the subsequent collapse in performance of Eskom’s generation fleet and the delay... →

BAND-AIDS & BAILOUTS

30th June 2023 Although there is a degree of acceptance that South Africa needs to restructure its highly unequal health system, there is nevertheless genuine concern over the proposed National Health Insurance scheme. Given extreme corruption and mismanagement across the public health sector currently, it is... →

DANGEROUS DECLINE

23rd June 2023 While it is positive that the Blue Drop, Green Drop and No Drop reports are again being published after a gap of several years, the reports themselves point to a worrying decline in the status of the country’s water supply. The drop in drinking water quality is particularly worrying, as is... →

GRID-LOCKED

16th June 2023 A lack of investment into South Africa’s grid over the past number of decades is at last being recognised as a major constraint to the integration of much-needed new generation, such as the wind projects left stranded during a recent procurement round. Efforts are belatedly being made to navigate... →

DARK HUMOUR

9th June 2023 South Africans are known to use humour as a coping mechanism against many of the difficulties they face, from nonsensical political statements to corruption and incompetence. Citizens have become decidedly humourless, however, as daily power cuts affect their livelihoods, their ability to study... →

DARK CLOUD

2nd June 2023 South Africans can see and feel the devastating effects of daily power cuts on their lives and livelihoods. The country’s literacy crisis, by contrast, is far less visible but its impacts are likely to be even more devastating if not addressed. The 2021 Progress in International Reading and... →

CHOPPY WATERS

26th May 2023 At the time of writing, there was still no clarity as to whether South African defence equipment or ammunition had been loaded onto the Russian cargo vessel the Lady R, when it docked at the Simon’s Town naval base on December 6. What was clear, though, was that South Africa had entered choppy... →

DANGER SIGNS

19th May 2023 South Africa’s non-aligned foreign policy stance was relatively straightforward to maintain when the world was globalising and democratising. Conditions have turned decidedly hostile in recent years, however, with geopolitical tensions manifesting not only in trade wars but in real ones. If South... →

MIXED MESSAGES

12th May 2023 The appointment of a dedicated Minister of Electricity was meant to ensure there was an individual to focus full-time on ending loadshedding and ensuring that the widely consulted Energy Action Plan (EAP) was implemented without delay. Since the appointment, however, there have been power... →

WINTER WARNING

5th May 2023 While there has been a Game of Thrones-like tussle over the precise role that South Africa’s Electricity Minister will play, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has become pretty consistent on one issue: the outlook for electricity supply in the high-demand winter months is bleak. That winter of discontent... →

BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE

28th April 2023 Even for those who have been living through the decline and have, thus, become somewhat oblivious, the dismal state of South Africa’s infrastructure is now almost impossible to ignore. Be it collapsed power pylons, railways stations stripped to concrete ruins, chronic cable theft, or the potholes... →

FLIP FLOPS

21st April 2023 The termination of the electricity state of disaster and the withdrawal of a poorly worded Gazette notice exempting Eskom from having to include details of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure from its financial statements offered yet more evidence of the current low levels of capacity... →

TROLLEY HAS BOLTED

14th April 2023 The decision by the Competition Commission to probe price hikes across a basket of five fruits and six vegetables is understandable given the level of food inflation over the past year. However, it is also a case of the trolley having already bolted and it is far from clear what impact the... →

HARD TIMES

7th April 2023 South Africa has entered a period that could be categorised as stagflation, whereby extremely weak economic growth is combining toxically with rising inflation and extreme unemployment. The International Monetary Fund has become the latest institution to announce a downward revision, slashing its... →

WAVES OF PAIN

31st March 2023 It has been an incredibly difficult start to the year, with intense loadshedding and a spike in crime having left individual and investor confidence decidedly soggy. While there have been improvements in the performance of some Eskom power stations, high utilisation factors leave these plants... →

BOILING POINT

24th March 2023 The right to protest is an essential part of any democracy. Sadly, protest action in South Africa is increasingly synonymous with acts of violence, intimidation and the destruction of property. Blame for this trend rests largely with the authorities, who tend only to react and act when protests... →

MEGA PROJECT

17th March 2023 Newly-appointed Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, seems to have embraced the ‘project manager’ title that many commentators felt Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe had bestowed on the portfolio in order to belittle its role. In various interviews Ramokgopa... →

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