“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” asked Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.” – Alice and The Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
“In another 18 months to two years, you will forget the challenges that we had with relation to power and energy and Eskom ever happened.” – Cyril Ramaphosa, September 2, 2015.
The last fortnight has been sheer madness.
The Squirrel rushed back from Egypt (where he’d been in de Nile) to solemnly tell us that:
a) there wouldn’t be any more load shedding and;
b) that he’d visited Medupi power station and it was ‘very big’.
Apparently, he’d forgotten he promised to end loadshedding a long time ago, and if he was in charge of sorting the problem, how come this was the first time he’d been to Medupi?
Oh, and the sabotage story. Purr-leeeez! Alex Erwin tried that one about Koeberg and got laughed out of the house.
Another minister admitted that the government had failed to spend upgrade money but forgot to tell Cyril, then Ace stepped up to the plate and told us all to calm down, the government was going to fix it. I’m not calm.
Less than 24 hours later we’d gone from Stage 2 to Stage 6, flying past Stage 4 without a glance, then we heard whispers of Stage 8 and, if Zuma was around, Stage eleventy eleven. Which is all fall down.
If it wasn’t so tragic, we’d be rolling in the aisles. Everyone over the age of three on the North Coast knows the system simply can’t take this on-off nonsense. From substations to toasters, they simply fail.
The usual crowd of denialists who savage anyone who criticises the ANC on social media have been strangely silent this week. Maybe even they have been irritated by the non-stop outages.
Apart from all the other levels of madness and complete denial that the ANC was anyhow responsible for this mess, I cannot get over the flat refusal to accept alternate sources of electricity.
I don’t for a moment believe that if the sugar mills, solar and wind farms and even domestic solar users were to help supply the country’s energy needs, that would automatically lead to job losses. Eskom might get slimmer, sure, but there would be jobs created by other employers both in the energy sector and in the increased businesses made possible by a better power supply.
But the unions cannot see beyond the end of their fat, double-time noses.
I heard a NUM union boss say on TV the other night that loadshedding was due to continue until 2025. He said it very quietly, but what the hell! He knows something Squirrel doesn’t?
At this point you have a choice: Pack for Perth or get your house off the grid asap. A friend in Kiwi land is trying to convince me to buy into a retirement home there, but to quote Boris Johnson I’d rather be dead in a ditch than go down that path. Solar power and water storage tanks are the way to go, in my book.
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Talking of Boris, I’m quite pleased that he stomped Labour in Britain. Colour me delighted. I’m obviously not alone, the way the markets rallied at the news last week. It’s important to this country as a major trading partner that Britain does well, ditto America, and Johnson might just be what Britain has been needing since Margaret Thatcher’s days.
So many people revile Thatcher, but they’re wrong.
Thatcher didn’t care about personal popularity. She knew she had to make unpopular choices and had the full election term of five years to do it (10 as it turned out), so she turned her back on the critics and got the job done.
I hope Johnson is cut from the same cloth and that’s precisely what Ramaphosa needs to do now: grab the bull by the horns and, to mix metaphors, castrate the unions. Make them get back in their box.
To fix Eskom, he needs to somehow force the millions who don’t pay for their electricity to change their ways. Load shed the municipalities that owe Eskom billions, for heaven’s sake! Don’t tar us all with the same brush. A couple of nights in the dark for Soweto, Bloemfontein and a few others will bring some change. Grow a backbone!
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Ballito has had 180mm of rain in the last week and 200mm so far this month. Less than some parts of the country but quite enough for local builders trying to get jobs done before the break.
Building a house has been quite an education. For most of the year, if you ask locals how business is, they’ll shrug and say “could be better”.
Twice in the last month I’ve asked companies to quote on quite expensive projects for the house and am still waiting for a response.
Anyhow, the worst of the rain should be over now and visitors can look forward to sunny skies and warm seas.
Can’t promise the northeaster won’t blow you off the beach sometimes, but then we have plenty of shopping malls these days for our upcountry visitors to indulge their favourite pastime.
One thing to celebrate is the traffic lights at Tiffany’s.
We North Coasters take pleasure in little things. It’s only taken seven years or thereabouts, but thank heavens for small mercies. The next trick will be to get lights at the Sheffield/Salt Rock intersection, but we won’t hold our breath, shall we?
There will be a final Courier on the street next week, but as this is my last column of the year and I wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Enjoy the time with your families, drink and eat responsibly and above all, be extra careful on the roads.
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What’s the difference between government and the Mafia? One of them is organised.
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