Electricity + Control January 2018

COMMENT

ON THE COVER

2018 promises to be fascinating!

W ell then – welcome to 2018. What a fascinating year it promises to be. We have the usual New Year excitement of students traipsing into Universities and TVET Colleges – to (we hope) – in due course join our profession in one or oth- er role – and then continue to build this economy of ours. And, my goodness, it needs building. In the profession? Well, as we have grown accustomed to the unknown and unpre- dictability of our environment – I am hope- ful that we will begin to see a settling down as things begin to return to normal, and the high levels of angst (that I perceive in soci- ety) slowly begin to disappear. A probable picture? At the time of writing, I just do not know. How can one tell? My sense is to move away from populist politics to real action and awaken to the urgency of growing the economy. Let me be blunt. Much of the populist pos- turing is premised on one thing, and that is a growing economy. It is not often that populist rhetoric is accompanied by the less populist, (and colder) acknowledge- ment that economic growth requires solid decisions and a stable policy environment. But so be it – this we leave to those more able to operate in the rarefied atmosphere of political leadership. From the perspective here at the coal face … I believe that unless we begin to sense stabilisation in the leadership and policy arenas, it will be hard to imagine a nota- ble build-up of confidence. What intrigues me is that the situation in which we find

ourselves seems to have crept up on us by stealth. Those who were aware of the issues simply were not able to articulate their concerns to the rest of us; or, more specifically, to those in positions where the matter could actually be dealt with properly. Now we have (as is our wont) another opportunity to start again. But is that not the nature of evolution? Nature tends to experiment until finally it hits on the cor- rect recipe, as it were. Our single biggest advantage is that we know how to move things forward. Whether the views of those in the appropriate leadership posi- tions will hold sway with the population, remains to be seen. I am confident. In fact, I am very confident that things will begin to move in the right direction. My sense is that we have reached a wa- tershed moment; we need to be coura- geous and step up. I am mindful that each of us needs to continually ask what we can do to assist. No matter how small the contribution – we need to step up and make a difference.

FEATURES: Control systems+ automation Drives,motors+ switchgear Earthing+ lightning protection Pressure+ levelmeasurement+ instrumentation

Beckhoff continues to develop its extensive, innovative product portfolio for seamless integration of Industrie 4.0 and IoT applications into the 1/11/2018 12:21:20PM www.electricityandcontrolmagazine.co.za EC JAN2018 cover.indd 1

overall control system. Read more on page 11.

Magazine Team

Editor: Design & Layout: Advertising Managers:

Wendy Izgorsek Adél JvR Bothma Helen Couvaras Heidi Jandrell Karen Smith Karen Grant Wilhelm du Plessis Ian Jandrell

Circulation: Publisher: Deputy Publisher: Editorial Technical Director:

Circulation

Quarter 3 (Jul - Sep 2017) Total print circulation: 4 537

Enjoy the year!

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Ian Jandrell PrEng IntPE(SA) BSc(Eng) GDE PhD, FSAAE FSAIEE SMIEEE

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