I don’t live in SA… and I’m tired of load shedding

I’m so sick of load shedding.

I don’t even live in South Africa and I’m sick of load shedding.

Every day I follow the woes of the people I know: this one swears by their inverter; that one has solar lights; this one is selling up and moving in with her brother because he has solar panels; that one just wishes the water wouldn’t disappear every time the power goes because she cannot cope without water too.

Another can’t afford the diesel for her generator; and one is getting solar, but the waiting list is long. This one just has to suck it up. Because while boer maak ’n plan, a woman living in a tiny rental with her unemployed husband, three children and no income save what she makes from remote work on her ageing laptop, simply doesn’t have the resources to make a plan.

All she’s doing is hoping that the computer won’t run out of power, please, not yet, not till she’s finished.

Meanwhile, there’s no energy tsar and no notable plan beyond the headless chicken dance, while the ruling party blusters about allegations of villains in their midst made by the one person who really would know, André de Ruyter.

ALSO READ: De Ruyter’s been gone a few days – why is there still load shedding?

It’s like a nest of well-cushioned snakes hissing at a toothless meerkat in a cage – a meerkat that has escaped the cage and, because it has a keen sense of self-preservation, is running as fast as it can in the opposite direction.

The name “Babita Deokaran” springs to mind. Whisper it, hiss it. And yet the government reckons this one man, De Ruyter, must file criminal charges if he knows of irregularities; they point self-righteously to the law stating it is illegal for a person in authority not to report corruption or criminality. Oh, the irony.

Arrest the entire government then! The nation is being gas-lit – alas, only metaphorically – and everyone from the media to the man in the street to the mice in the walls knows about the corruption, the grafting, the sabotage, all the way from grand scale like Kusile power station, to purchased but non-existent coal deliveries, to… what? Pens stolen from the stationery cupboard? Pens bought via inflated tender from someone’s cousin?

So could the last person to leave please switch the lights off?

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