PAUL BURKHARDT
ON a late Thursday afternoon last November, in the midst of rolling blackouts implemented by South Africa’s state-owned electricity company, a contractor at a power station in the eastern Mpumalanga province pulled a plug connected to one of the site’s main generation units.
The unit subsequently broke down, ensuring yet another day of nationwide outages.
The worker later confessed that he had intentionally sabotaged the machinery — resulting in $1 million in damages and almost $6 million in lost revenue — so his employer would be hired to make the repairs, according to a statement and report presented to lawmakers by Eskom.
This wasn’t an isolated event – rather, it was one of more than 760 criminal incidents targeting Eskom operations over a 90-day period ending in December. At every step of its supply chain, the utility, which is responsible for producing 90% of South Africa’s energy, has had
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