One clear message that came through at the Power-Gen Africa conference in Cape Town this week was directed at politicians and the governments they serve: stop short-term thinking and planning.
In energy terms as well as water and food security, it is necessary to plan for 30 or even 50 years ahead.
Lawrence Jones, vice-president of US energy company Alstom summed up this view in a panel discussion when he noted that politicians should be prepared to put in place projects that they might not live to see implemented. However, short-term thinking remains the order of the day and political considerations are most often given priority.
A classic case, mentioned only in passing by Leon Tromp of the Lesotho Highlands Water Commission, applied to the need to carry out essential maintenance of the tunnels and equipment that provide water to South Africa and electrical power to Lesotho.
This coincided with the last election in South Africa and there was no way of knowing in advance how long this might take.
Such maintenance takes place every ten years and covers the 55km of tunnels that link the Mohale to the Katse dam and from there to the Ash River that feeds Gauteng’s major water source, the Vaal dam.
Not only would Lesotho lose its generating capacity during maintenance — it would have to be made up from Eskom in South Africa, so reducing output to South African consumers — but the flow of water into South Africa would be disrupted and could cause shortages to farmers.
“So it was not possible to have an outage then,” Tromp noted.
In the event, the delay caused no problems and, with the election out of the way, the maintenance was completed.
Cape Town, South Africa-based journalist commentator and author specialising in political and economic analysis and labour matters. 
Terry Bell Writes 
Andrew Boraine
March 20, 2014
Terry, this is why we have to take the National Development Plan seriously (I’m not talking about the content, but the concept). It is a key mechanism to get us beyond the short-termism of electoral cycles and departmental 3-year budgets.
We also need more specific NDP implementation capacity, beyond the existing mandate of the National Planning Commission – in place for 5 years to draw up the plan but not to execute it. One of the problems I have with the current process is that the NPC correctly produced a ‘whole of society’ plan, but then it is meant to be implemented by national government departments and SOEs – a very restricted view of development.
Executing short term development projects in relation to long term goals is never easy, but it needs to be done consciously
Terry Bell
March 20, 2014
Thanks Andrew. I agree one should take national development planning seriously. And the fact that an NDP was produced shows, I think, correct thinking in terms of timescale. But I have even more problems with the existing NDP than the ones you mention. I also think you are being very polite in referring to proposed implementation by national government and SOEs only as “a very restricted view of development”.