South Africa is dying Mr. President, what are you doing about it?

 “Happy New Year” you said, and so did millions of other South Africans when the clock struck 12 on the 31^st of December 2022.

The new year 2023, brimmed with optimism and hope.

I can still hear my grandfather clock hitting every chime until that very last 12th one, every note excruciating, wondering what the new year would bring, whether it would be a platter of delicious fruit, or the grapes of wrath for another year filed with challenges and problems.

Was Pandora’s box going to be fully opened this time, bringing all the horrors of the darkness? Is there light and hope in that box when the darkness subsides?

Sitting in my lounge, the family and I took a step outside to take in the celebrations. But was there anything to celebrate? We saw nothing.

Millions of others were however taking in the joyous evening like there is no tomorrow. But guess what, there is a tomorrow.  Celebrating until the wee hours of the morning, fireworks brightening the sky with a myriad of striking colours, but it was all just black and white, an illusion of epic proportions of light but the reality of complete and utter darkness. You just could not see it, could you?

Don’t worry I don’t blame you for being the eternal optimist. I was for a while, but the horror of the reality hit me like the load shedding that the country was experiencing on New Year’s Day.

While many people thought it was the start of a fresh promise of a new year, all they saw was a mirage of something that was never there in the first place.

Busting data on millions of messages and watching money burn as the night sky lit up with fireworks, a new year was just born with a disfigured face staring at you with that wry smile.

I am trying to be optimistic about the new year, but let’s face it, and no matter how much you want to believe, it just did not start off with a bang of those colourful fireworks.

How can anyone be happy in a country where nothing works, especially the power?

Now we are back to load shedding for who know how long and it’s just going to get worse and the year has just begun.

Like myself, South Africans are gatvol for load shedding. Enough is enough. Eskom, the dark lords at Megawatt Park, the princes of darkness, call them what you want, have exacerbated the suffering.

Many people are time bombs waiting to be explode in a tirade of expletives like a late-night news anchor who lost it during a bulletin. Remember him? It was the calm before the storm…

During the 40-second rant he repeatedly swore as he directed his ire at various targets including a group of police officers accused of murdering a member of the public, firebrand politician Julius Malema and the country’s right-wing Afrikaner AWB party.

The anchor then expressed anger about being stuck on his network’s overnight ‘graveyard shift’ before inviting listeners to follow his blog and then storming out of the studio.

If that’s a bit too hectic for you consider these words about South Africans just having had enough, written here merely for context to show that they are stirred and shaken by the problems in the county. Just one turn of the cap and… well you get the idea.

So, like the poem Hiroshima, a, “gloved finger poised and pressed… and oblivion”

No one is afraid of the dark anymore, especially children whose mothers used to tell them stories of the boogeymen or how Wee Willie Winkie would catch them if they don’t go to sleep.

Night has become day. Each one of us have unleashed the Batman in us to lurk in the night as load shedding has become the norm and no longer a breaking story that used to generate thousands of views on news websites.

However, people are adapting their lifestyles around the deliberate power cuts. I recently overheard a conversation a colleague was having on the phone and while it made me giggle, it was serious.

She told the other person on the phone that she could not make the 3pm appointment because load shedding would kick in that time and she had to rush home before that to feed her baby and cook for her husband.

Obviously, she would’ve had to negotiate load shedding traffic to get home. How easy has those words become on the tongue, “load shedding traffic”. Before it was traffic in the rain that took precedence.

I am tired of load shedding, I really am. Besides my own torment from the power cuts, my heart really breaks for those it has hit the hardest. The home executive who cooks and bakes for a living, the home industry business and so many more.

Small businesses who can’t afford generators have shut down, home care patients who rely on oxygen have spent thousands on alternative power sources. Load shedding has affected everyone and alternative power sources which cost record prices have burnt holes in the pockets of those who could afford them.

In Back to the Future II when old Biff from the future steals the Time Machine to give a gambling results book to himself in the past so that he can win obscene amounts of money, the space time continuum is altered and skewed in a direction that almost makes the current future unrecognisable.

A future where everything from the police force to the government is broken. Is that what South Africa is heading for? Has the country skewed into an alternate time line that we don’t recognise when freedom was won? What will be left of this country for our children?

It’s almost like the 25 million potholes reported to be across the country. You have to be very careful when driving on the country’s roads.

There are many craters on the road surface that was caused by an asteroid. They are so deep, that if you hit it, it takes you through a black hole to another dimension.

I have to be honest and many would agree with me, I don’t remember a time in my life when I saw power cuts at this level and intensity. Heck, I don’t think we had power cuts at all. It’s just so nauseating and enough to drive you to say: “Fuck it, I am leaving this place”.

I put up a Twitter poll recently asking my followers that with all that is currently happening in South Africa, never-ending deliberate power cuts called load shedding, high crime rate, CIT heists, murders, corruption and dwindling economy, given the opportunity, would they leave the country?

“Is it time to leave South Africa, your home?” I asked.

While the results may only be a picture of my followers or some others, a whopping 72.5% said yes, while 27.5% said no. This gives you an indication that people are fed up, they are tired and they just want to get out of this country, well some of them anyway.

One just has to look at the classifieds across various websites, including Facebook Marketplace.

There are hundreds of emigration sales, people are selling everything, packing up and leaving the country they called home for so many years.

It makes me sad, because after talking to them, they told me they did not want to emigrate but are forced to due to the circumstances surrounding various issues plaguing this country.

“There is no place like South Africa,” they said. “But what can we do? We can’t live like this “

Having a conversation with another colleague, she told me to be optimistic. But when she opened her eyes, she saw the horror. “We can just hope this year will be better,” she said.

I truly hope it could be a better year, I do and I know many people would be clinging onto the same hope, waiting to find the proverbial pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow.

South Africa is a rainbow nation alright, but there is no gold there, just black, dark earth and a land filled with problems.

South Africa is a broken country right now, like a porcelain doll that fell off the shelf. You can patch it up, but the scars are there.

Some have said that South Africa is a great country, an example for others and lesson to share.  Recently, there is absolutely no evidence to support this statement that we are one of the great countries in the world.

It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws – for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbours, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest.

We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy.

We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered and made a difference.

The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one. South Africa is not one of the greatest countries in the world anymore.

Like many a South African, I am waiting with bated breath for someone to do something and that someone has to be President Cyril Ramaphosa. He spoke of a “new dawn” but the country is only seeing darkness.

Like many South Africans, and being a journalist, I hope this story reaches him so that he can read this line: “Mr. President, do something. Don’t make elaborate wild-eyed promises or fixate on dreams, just fix what is wrong now, not tomorrow, or the day after or waiting for the new dawn, fix it now! There is no new dawn Mr. President, it’s just darkness all around.

Stop thinking and act. Get your cabinet and carpe diem, seize the day before there is nothing left of this country.  Do you really know what load shedding is Mr. President?

To provide context, brilliant attorney Alan Shore from the TV show Boston Legal argues a death penalty case before the US Supreme Court.

Using his words to create context, I want to say, South Africa is alive with opportunity. That was a narrative, a slogan that was used for many years after so many fought so hard for the freedom of this country. So many died for this freedom.

“I would beg you to honour that. I’d also like to say, despite my tone, I have always been and still am in enormous awe of this country. Elected officials represent the will of the South African people, but the freedoms we enjoy has always reflected our soul and our conscience. My conscience and I hope yours.

You simply cannot reconcile letting this country become a disabled mother whether she is fighting her battles or not. You and government have to be better than that! Even if some rogue elements aren’t. You know, on the front lawns of the Union Buildings is that magnificent sculpture of the father of the free nation Nelson Mandela, part of which symbolises the concept of justice tempered by mercy when he reconciled with the architects of apartheid.

If mercy truly lives within these boundaries of our beautiful country within your hearts as leaders, as people, you simply cannot cause this country to be injected with load shedding and other problem for the purpose of killing this land.

It’s very possible that many people have hope about this land. They asked me to tell you that. That they don’t want to leave. They felt it was important that you know that.

South Africa whispered into my ear in a moment of sadness. She also asked me to tell you that she doesn’t want to die.

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