Escalating power failures are early warning signs of a failing state. Under-estimating demand and over-estimating supply show an Eskom that lost its technical skills to affirmative action and its maintenance programme to vanity projects like the Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor.

Where was the institutional oversight? The National Energy Regulator is lost to patronage and bureaucratic bloat.

Failures in health, education, law and order and the escalation of crime, poverty, violence and disease are more warning signs.

The year 2010, and every year before and after, needs uninterrupted electricity. This will require the African National Congress to stop its excesses of patronage that turn government and the parastatals into sheltered employment for the well-connected incompetent.

Hire people of all races on their courage and skill, not their race and party. The blackouts show that power to the people increasingly depends upon power to the people.