We have blue Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays thanks to Eskom and cable thieves. We take them on the chin.
We don’t waste our energy anymore on regular power trips. We save our energy for the hard labour of making a fire, lifting a gas cylinder and taking a cold bath.
We have come to accept that every day is cable theft day or load-shedding day or Eskom day – every day is blue.
But oh man, there’s something about a blue, blue Monday that hurts more than any other day. Waking up to the deafening silence and enlightening darkness of no electricity on Monday borders on torture. Mondays are hard as it is – whether it is month-end or in the middle of the month. A Monday is blue without adding another shade of blue.
Some of us in this beautiful country had a level 8 blue Monday this week. It was so bad it spilt over into Tuesday – depending on what time your alarm went off. Cable thieves and/or Eskom know how to kick us when we are already down.
Our area was in darkness for over 24 hours thanks to attempted cable theft. A tiny slice through a cable that lies buried no deeper than some potholes we have on our roads resulted in blackouts that took over a day to fix.
I’ve seen people dig bigger trenches to plant a tree. I’ve seen irrigation pipes that are buried deeper in the ground than some of our power cables. Hell, I’ve seen sunken lanes with more depth than the furrows that house the cables that power our households, businesses and the economy.
Fellow South Africans, it is a lot harder to steal a loaf of bread at your local supermarket than it is to steal a power cable. Thanks to pictures and videos that are shared by our councillors, stealing a power cable has never looked so easy. It is like slicing a piece of bread.
The irony is that when there is cable theft or a fault of one sort or the other, there are different teams that have to be notified, all bringing in special expertise, equipment and manpower to fix the damage done with just a pickaxe, shovel, rubber gloves and a knife. The pictures shared this week on our neighbourhood group by our councillors were so tragic. They showed a people held to ransom by criminals.
Winter is here.
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