Johannesburg – I remember it like it was yesterday; except that it was 15 years ago. We had just finished dinner and my colleague and I were clearing the table to wash the dishes.
But she was so excited to host a visitor from her home country that she forgot that the power cuts off each day at 8pm.
She told me not to worry, the generator would kick in in a moment. And it did, and we chatted until late at night, almost forgetting that we had a lot of work to do the next day.
I thanked my lucky stars that I worked at the regional office in South Africa. That I visited the country offices when duty called. And this time when duty called, it took me to Luanda in Angola.
Little did I know that the power cuts in Luanda were a precursor to the blackouts that awaited in Moxico, an hour’s flight from the capital.
There, by 8pm the area is pitch black.
The generator is switched off just as darkness covers the area. There is nothing as terrifying as the sound of darkness in a foreign country for a woman travelling solo and staying in an isolated house whose guest quarters double as the office.
Earlier during the day, I had passed UN staff with landmine detonators at work.
When I got home to South Africa more than a week later, I thanked God that we have a stable power supply and a great road network.
It did not occur to me that in about eight years, we would not be very much different from Angola. Load-shedding, load reduction and load rotation have become part of our daily lives. What a time to be a spin doctor in South Africa.
How did we allow terminology that is coined by people whose sole job is to reduce the negative perceptions that the media and public may have of an issue or event? How did the media become so complicit in calling power cuts load-shedding. When did the media become so comfortable using euphemisms such as load-shedding, reduction and rotation instead of power cuts?
Oh, the audacity of Eskom. The power utility has become super-efficient in communicating these blackouts. Why does it not use the same vigour in scheduling maintenance so that the public does not suffer whenever one, two or more generators lose their capacity?
The media and the public must not be party to efforts by Eskom to hide the fact that South Africa has the most unstable, unreliable and fickle power supply.
We must call power cuts, power cuts, blackouts, blackouts – to call them by any other name does not change what they are.
Besides, how can we deal with a problem that we mask in a potpourri of euphemisms?
After all, load-shedding, reduction or rotation by any other name is still a power cut.
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