Stalking Venus

“Eskom currently finds itself in a position where the demand for electricity may exceed the available supply from time to time. In order to manage the situation in the best possible way, planned supply interruptions may have to be carried out.”

Those are words from South Africa’s electricity department. I honestly can’t think of any other country in the world that has cities large enough to contain skyscrapers, where the national electricity supplier is quite happy to tell people that they are going to schedule power outages or, as they call it, load shedding.

This little device you see on the right, is what we see on our national television channels every evening. It tells us how badly the power company is fucking up at any given time. When the Eskometer goes into the red, a banner appears across whatever crap you’re watching that says - and I shit you not - things like: “Please turn off your television, your hot water geyser, heaters, and as many lights as possible.”

This is on one of the days when they haven’t scheduled a weekly power outage for your area.

In my area, there is a “planned supply interruption” between 6pm and 8.30pm every Tuesday for the forseeable future. No TV, no internet, no heat, no lights, no hot food… Nothing. And it’s supposed to be okay with us, despite the fact that we haven’t scheduled any “planned supply interruptions” with our cash payments to them each month.

So every Tuesday, all security systems in all homes in the affected area either switch to battery power, activate - sending the blare of alarm sirens into the night - or go dead altogether. The armed response companies start to get used to the interruptions and false alarms and stop responding to calls during the scheduled outages. Criminals step out en-masse.

I mean, you almost couldn’t make this shit up!

So what is Eskom doing about it? Are they spending more money on keeping trained staff in the country? No. Salaries are at an all time low. Are they hiring professionals from other countries to consult on how to fix this? No.

The fact is, that like so many other industries in this country, the intellectual capital is fucking the hell off out of here and nothing is being done to address this problem. When I went to write my International English test - one of the requirements for visa application to Australia - almost every single one of the 250+ people were applying for emigration purposes. The IELTS staff told me that this is the case every time there’s an exam!

The thing is, that there are so many small hassles along the way, that it becomes difficult to notice that you’re heading towards one almighty cluster fuck. Just one more minor inconvenience eventually becomes you, sitting in a country that you are no longer allowed to leave, with the infrastructure totally dissolving around you while you’re expected to contribute more and more of your salary so that you and your family can eventually be beaten to death at night in your own home, because someone wants your cellphone.

(See the crime stats for Cape Town central)

Scary shit.

For in-depth ranting, see the Eskom Sucks website.