We are in a fix. Mzansi’s hit for a six. It’s almost like a jinx. The country has no electricity. The nights plunge my community in a sea of dark impossibility.
That’s my attempt to lighten the burden of loadshedding. Except, there is no lighter side to these rolling blackouts we suffer daily.
It’s been more than a decade and it keeps getting worse. Clearly the powers-that-be are up the creek without a paddle.
They have nothing to show for their fancy plans and turnaround strategies.
The implosion of Eskom has been in the making for a long time.
The country is awash with coal reserves that can power the economy for the next century. However, the creaking infrastructure was left to decay. There is absolutely no foresight to invest in new capacity when electricity was rolled out in old townships and new settlements.
That is a terrible shame considering that South Africa generates 25% of Africa’s electricity. It’s not rocket science that small and medium enterprises are crucial for job creation and economic growth and we are in dire need of both.
My heart bleeds for the old lady who wakes up early to bake amagwinya (fat cakes) for her early customers, only for loadshedding to hit at 6am. My thoughts are with the restaurant losing evening clients who abandon their orders because of loadshedding.
Even the renowned KFC announced temporary closure of 70 outlets because of electricity woes. It seems like running the generator during blackouts doesn’t make business sense anymore. The highly successful American fried chicken outlet cannot carry the burden of loadshedding. These are jobs hit hardest by the Covid-19 lockdowns until last year. That’s foreign investment down the drain.
My heart stops every time I’m forced to abandon my online work because of network problems caused by electricity failure. But unlike the pandemic, loadshedding is man-made and you can’t sanitise or mask it up.
Older readers will remember the time when the country had excess cheap electricity and pylons were even embossed on apartheid bank notes. Today we are the laughingstock of neighbouring countries and expats. They sneer and jeer at the spectacular decline of our fortunes. They claim they foresaw and knew the new dispensation would crumble.
The New Dawn vaunted in 2017 has turned into a mirage, a sleight of hand that ushered era of further incompetence. So bad are things some say even under Jacob Zuma, things were not this bad. He must be laughing himself
silly wherever he is.
The truth, however, is we are indeed in a fix and those in power simply don’t care.
They talk right and act left.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
