The bizarre handling of the nuclear deal process to date paints a disturbing picture of the way the country is being run, says Bryan Rostron.
Cape Town - President Jacob Zuma had nothing to do with his friends flying wedding guests into a military airbase. He failed to notice costly building at his home in Nkandla. Now it seems Mr Zuma didn’t fly to Moscow to seal a nuclear deal as Russian and South Africa communiqués said he did. Until they said he didn’t.
This suggests that the biggest and most expensive decision that South Africa will take in the post-apartheid era will be conducted in a personalised and extremely secretive manner.
The global nuclear industry, like the arms trade, is already habitually secretive and – given the vast costs involved – often duplicitous. This unpropitious start to South Africa’s stated intent to become more reliant on nuclear power should be ringing strident alarm bells.
The evidence so far suggests that we could be on a disastrous course. The costs are unknown but will be astronomical. Added to the bizarre handling of the process to date, this could potentially bankrupt the country. Possibly even more disturbing, however, is what it tells us about the way the country is being run.
Astoundingly, who did Zuma pick to oversee this difficult process? He chose perhaps his most hapless cabinet minister. Having failed to impress at Agriculture and Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson was promoted to Minister of Energy.
Yet why on earth would you select someone so widely decried for her previous ministerial performance, and who had received sharply adverse reports from the Public Protector, to be in charge of our biggest and costliest project?
It gets murkier. Recently Zuma flew to Moscow. The visit aroused much speculation. It was announced blandly that he would have a “rest” and while there have discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Afterwards the Russian state-owned nuclear company, Rosatom, proclaimed that they had signed a deal to build up to eight nuclear reactors. The statement, issued jointly with our Energy Department, said that this, “lays the foundation for the large scale nuclear power plants procurement and development programme…”
Ministers and ANC MPs, caught on the hop, admitted that they knew nothing about this. Faced with such confusion there was a swift retraction from both the Russians and South Africans.
Their communiqué, they claimed, was a mistranslation. The agreement was merely an outline framework and that other countries would be free to bid. So far, so very murky. And decidedly suspicious.
For it suggests that Zuma has hijacked the process.
What other democratic head of state would fly round the world to furtively negotiate a nuclear deal of such technical, scientific and financial complexity?
Experts and ministers usually spend years bargaining over the details and then – only after an informed political decision has been taken – might heads of state meet to sign off publically on the deal.
But some of the highest ranking ANC politicians concede that they knew nothing whatsoever about what was going on. All this strongly implies that President Zuma has stealthily, personally, intervened to short cut normal procedures and present South Africa with a fait accompli.
There are two vital principles at stake: affordability and accountability. There is no clarity on either. Our government blustered and obfuscated while Rosatom hired a PR company to explain away what appears to be a stitch up between two high-handed presidents. The global nuclear industry has always played the “commercial confidentially” card to dodge awkward questions. Or in extremis, as the Russians have already done, the industry habitually falls back on the “sorry, that’s a classified state secret” ploy. Expect to see a lot of those slippery excuses trotted out in the coming months.
In many years of reporting in the UK, the nuclear industry proved the most devious. In one investigation, the team I worked with spent months prising out of each power station two figures: what had been the original estimate for costs compared to the final price. The average overrun was five times the initial estimate, totalling a staggering £2 359 million. That was 25 years ago.
Though it took an outrageously long time to uncover what should have been publicly available figures, the exercise threw up two other fascinating facts. The average delay on completing these nuclear power stations was seven years; then when finally “on stream”, the average time for each station being out of action due to technical glitches was over 50 percent. Thus they generated less than half the amount of electricity that had originally been promised.
Of course, none of the costs and problems for those Advanced Water-Cooled Reactors included the massive and unquantifiable expense of long-term storage of nuclear waste. Doubtless nuclear power advocates will respond that there are now different designs and technical improvements.
But that is not my central point. This was succinctly expressed not long after our exposés by a statement from the British House of Commons Energy Select Committee: “Given the recent history of nuclear power it will never again be possible to take assurances as to the viability of any type of nuclear power on trust.”
Clearly the furtive manner of our present nuclear approach suggests that we are expected to take this crucial decision “on trust”. One informed estimate puts the price tag for the nuclear project at R1 trillion, though the Treasury has been careful to say – unnervingly – that they have not costed this grandiose project. So at present we are all simply blundering around in the dark.
In that (murky) light, before endorsing any technical or scientific arguments, proponents of South African nuclear ambitions need to address the highly irregular decision-making process. All the evidence suggests that it has been compromised, if not irretrievably corrupted.
This seems to be part of an ominous pattern under President Zuma. He has undermined the National Prosecuting Authority, the Secret Services and the Public Protector. Now with his secretive trip to Russia to negotiate a mysterious nuclear deal he appears to be personally tunnelling away at any remaining collective management process within government and the ANC.
We can’t even begin to hope for a public debate or an open policymaking process when Zuma appears to be on a mission of his own, side-lining his own cabinet and party.
At the heart of the matter seems to be the capricious ambitions of the president. In both the scandals of the Gupta guests at Waterkloof Airbase and profligate expenditure at his Nkandla home, officials are cynically hung out to dry. There has been no political responsibility.
What is happening within the ANC seems to be a steadily escalating case of “substitutionalism”.
Zuma’s two fiercest minders, Gwede Mantashe and Blade Nzimande, will understand this concept being clued-up cadres of the Communist Party. Leon Trotsky coined the term, explaining how, “the organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole, then the central committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally a ‘dictator’ substitutes himself for the central committee”. Jacob Zuma appears to be substituting himself for some of our most vital decision-making processes.
It is not hard to predict that with two autocratic presidents, Jacob Zuma and Vladimir Putin, secrecy will remain the fundamental nuclear procurement formula. It is a blueprint for democratic – if not nuclear – disaster.
* Bryan Rostron is a Cape Town based author and journalist.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Cape Times