This makes depressing but convincing reading.

South Africa’s problem is that it is mainly a vast desert. Keeping the water and power systems working across a space that size requires amazing sharp-end engineering technique and sustained policy and operational discipline. And if top-end skills are undervalued or eroded by bungled government policy and/or attempts to achieve better ‘racial balance’ rather than deploy vital expertise, those systems will decay.

With alarming real-life consequences.

All this mess was both predictable and predicted. Andrew Kenny has been writing about the problems for years.

But huge damage has been done. With a lot more to come.