South African government's solution for its electricity shortage: Fire 3,000 skilled whites

Let me show you how a once-advanced society goes down the tubes.

No, I'm not talking about the U.S.--not this time, anyway.  Instead it's poor, doomed South Africa, which is a decade or two farther down the road of insanity.

Turns out all the electricity in the country is produced and sold by just one company, Eskom.  And after 21 years of communist mismanagement, lack of investment, and letting the poor and the connected have "free" electricity, Eskom doesn't have enough generating capacity for everyone.  The temporary "fix" is rolling blackouts.

The real solution, of course, would be to build more powerplants.  Of course that takes a great many skilled engineers and lots of skilled labor.  And money.  Which neither the company nor the government, of course, has, since most revenue goes to welfare and bureaucrat salaries.

Now the black-run communist government, which for the past dozen years has had an official policy of firing white workers and putting government supporters in their place, has a plan to save money:  They've ordered the company to fire 3,389 whites over five years--over a thousand engineers and over 2,000 skilled workers.  They're to be replaced by non-whites.

Years ago the government ordered Eskom to only hire non-whites, as part of its program to boost black employment. Unfortunately the company says it's having a hard time finding enough qualified non-white applicants.

The government has also ordered Eskom to reduce its safety requirements to make it easier for non-white applicants to qualify for jobs.

Now I have no idea who's telling the truth in South Africa, and I don't doubt there are qualified black engineers there, but if the company is correct it's not at all hard to predict the future:  No new powerplants will be built, so electrical production won't increase.  And ageing equipment won't be maintained, so failures will increase.  But population will most certainly continue to increase, increasing demand, so rolling blackouts will increase. 

Whereupon the communist politicians will scream to their followers that any shortages are de fault of de white debbils.  Which, amazingly, will cause electricity production to increase by a totally unexpected...zero percent.  (Although according to government figures it will have risen substantially, and everyone will be baffled that with all the alleged extra capacity, rolling blackouts will be more common than ever.).

The NY Times and The Atlantic will weigh in with thoughtful articles on how hard this tragic state of affairs has hit the poor, and how it's almost certainly due to the policies of apartheid (which ended 21 years ago but you know....).  The congressional black caucus will introduce a bill for the U.S. to ship modular nuclear powerplants to South Africa, gratis, as foreign aid.  Congressional Republicans will vote for the measure unanimously, lest someone, somewhere accuse them of being racist.

And by 2030 or so, electrical production in South Africa will be back to 2002 levels.

Oh, and Eskom will have seven new vice-presidents--all of whom, by amazing coincidence, will be found to be related to the communist president of South Africa, will pulling down six-figure salaries and driving the biggest BMWs or Mercedes made.  They'll have titles like "VP in charge of equitable workplace sharing" and the like.

And the NY Times will publish glowing articles about yet another huge success for socialism.
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And lest you think this report is fiction:  The source is a very gutsy television station in SA.  (Link at the above link.)