[chesimov]

Fair point, but choosing the electricity crisis as an example is not helping your claim - the Apartheid lot left us with something like 50% overcapacity and almost the cheapest electricity in the world at the time. We actually have less electricity generating capacity right now than at that time. The lack of generting capacity has severely constrained our economy since. When the crisis first bit in the 2000s, many mines had to shut down for the first time in 200 years of continuous operations.

The government had an initial plan to redirect overcapacity in many areas (not just electricity) to rolling out services to those neglected by the Apartheid govt, and then after that to start building infrastructure again (not sure of specifics, maybe 5 years on?). The problem is that in most cases, this never happened. Hence the limits of most infrastructure are gradually being hit, with a knock-on effect for the economy.

[eisa01]

If you have 50% overcapacity you have completely failed to plan your electricity system - that't not really a measure of success

[chesimov]

It was a different time - my understanding is that having a multiply redundant system was important for an isolated pariah state. Think of it like the strategic petroleum reserves in certain isolated states of today. Of course none of that was necessary once SA rejoined the global community. This extra capacity could have been carefully mothballed for later use; instead we are now building 2x brand new coal stations, each of which will be the largest coal plants in the world.