South Africa’s Blackouts Threaten Civil War

After South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster last month in response to an acute electricity shortage, the United States Embassy advised South Africans to stock up on food and water.

South Africa has been grappling with power cuts for the past 15 years, but officials now say these blackouts may soon last as long as 14 hours. This load-shedding will likely cause $12.7 billion in losses and could push the nation into civil war if the power grid collapses completely.

Coming storm: In a Twitter thread on February 25, a volunteer with the group AfriForum argued that South Africa has collapsed:

We’re seeing an increase in coordinated attacks on water, power and communications infrastructure. Looting is no longer just a daily thing but is also now becoming more structured with guerrilla planning involved. Our roads no longer exist. Anything that is state-run is crumbling. Police, fire and hospital resources for the state don’t exist and are also slowly disintegrating. … Our murder rate is higher than the death rate in Ukraine’s current conflict.

Marxist takeover: Between 1960 and 1990, the state-owned power company Eskom increased its production capacity 10-fold as South Africa became the powerhouse of the sub-Sahara. Yet since the end of apartheid, the African National Congress has demanded that Eskom provide free electricity to their impoverished voting base while politicians siphoned off profits for themselves. Decades of Marxist politics and corruption have destroyed Eskom and caused the shortages destroying the nation.

Lost birthright: After Nelson Mandela began filling his cabinet posts with Communist Party members in 1994, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry warned that “South Africa is the first of the Anglo-Saxon nations to give away its God-given birthright.” How prescient was this warning? The British, Dutch and French peoples who settled in South Africa were descended from ancient Israel and, therefore, heirs of the promises God made to Abraham. Yet they have abandoned their Judeo-Christian heritage for Marxist principles—and the current blackouts are the result of this disastrous decision.

For more, read our article “A Warning From South Africa.”