Dancing through the darkness: A letter to Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa

Dear Kgosientsho Ramokgopa,

Congratulations on whatever it is that you do.

The life of a Cabinet minister can’t be easy.

The worst part, I imagine, is the sleepless nights caused by worrying about the jobless and the children who go to bed hungry every night.

Ha-ha, just kidding.

I’m sure the worst part is having to attend Cabinet meetings and listen to antediluvian relics like Gwede Mantashe and Janus-faced jokers like John Steenhuisen rabbiting on.

And to make sure you’re never alone in the bathroom with Gayton McKenzie.

I don’t know what your job requires other than the ability to dance stylishly at the many government functions that require dancing.

As someone who failed to graduate from the Helen Zille School of Dance and Culture, I envy your sense of rhythm.

Sure, I also envy your R225 000 a month salary, free housing, dozens of flights a year, security guards, chauffeurs and so on, but it’s your ability to shake your booty that I envy most of all.

Inasmuch as I don’t have a clue what is required of you from Tuesday to Thursday, the typical public servant’s work week, I also don’t know what your job actually entails.

What does the Minister of Electricity and Energy do all day?

ALSO READ: Load shedding excuses are dim, Minister Ramokgopa

I expect yours starts with a fashionably late arrival at work, perhaps marked with an impish pirouette or even a playful pas de chat before performing a jeté into your well-appointed office.

Your underlings no doubt react with cries of approval and a modest smattering of applause.

Shortly, the department seamstress makes a discreet visit to mend the tear in your tailor-made trousers, because, unless you are wearing tights, a jeté will do that to a pair of broeks, even if they were stitched by Giorgio Armani’s own hand.

Once inside your oak-panelled sanctuary, the first task of the day is to flip your light switch.

I’d be disappointed if you didn’t have someone to do that for you.

If he or she is off sick, the deputy light switch flipper would be standing by.

This is the most important part of your day.

It tells you right away if there is electricity and whether or not you are doing your job.

If the opulent recessed lighting comes alive, you will probably want to celebrate with a round of drinks or golf.

However, if the lights don’t come on, as they haven’t been doing for the last few days, I imagine you go to DEFCON 1 and call the director of light bulbs to check for a fault.

If the fault does not lie with the bulbs, it must lie elsewhere. Never, ever with you, of course.

DEFCON 2 is engaged.

ALSO READ: Stage 6 load shedding ’embarrasses’ South Africa in front of the world

A call to the manager of generators and if the gennies are fine, straight to DEFCON 3.

WhatsApp your friends to see if they have power.

And then, slumping back into your leather swivel ’n tilt chair, you steel yourself for the worst part of your job – calling the head of Eskom’s board.

In another office not far away, Dr Mteto Nyati braces himself for a call from you.

Being a smart man and author of a book titled Betting on a Darkie, I expect he’s out of the starting gate before you can get a word in.

“It was raining for eight days last week …” I imagine him saying.

I only imagine this because these are the words he used when asked by a reporter to explain the Stage 6 clusterfu*k imposed on the nation.

Because of the bad weather, he said, all the selfish people with solar panels on their roofs switched over to Eskom.

The cheek of it.

Did they not know there was only enough power for those of us who can’t afford solar and that the entire system would crash with the extra demand?

Did they even care?

ALSO READ: ‘Short-term pain, long-term gain’ – Eskom explains when load shedding will end

The excuse of wet coal causing load shedding was wearing thin and I, for one, am pleased that you are now blaming the people with solar.

If it rains during the day, they should be forced to sit in the dark at night, eat raw meat and drink warm beer instead of sucking up all the power and forcing us decent God-fearing folk to also sit in the dark, eat raw meat and drink warm beer.

It’s not just the rain and renewable energy hippies to blame, though.

You said the other day that Eskom was being “a bit more aggressive on maintenance”.

I assumed you meant Dr Nyati was sending his droogs around to the power stations with baseball bats.

There’s nothing like the threat of having your skull busted open to focus the mind.

Then, on top of it all, 10 generating units were “unexpectedly” lost.

I can see how one or two might go astray, but 10?

These units aren’t exactly the size of dementia patients. They don’t just wander off into the night if nobody’s keeping an eye on them.

Anyway, Sputla, if there are any spare droogs, send them around to the many ANC-controlled municipalities that owe Eskom R100 billion.

That should buy a lot of diesel and keep you in dancing.

NOW READ: What about future outages? What energy analysts say about the future of load shedding