On loadshedding (this time around)

Good afternoon from Cape Town.

I’m sitting here writing a blog post to take my mind off the fact that I will be missing at least the first half hour of Sheffield United’s match at Norwich City because there’s loadshedding (“rolling blackouts”) and we’re being loadshod right now. There are no electricitys.

How am I writing this, then? Well, my laptop has a battery. However, the router does not have a battery, so I’m writing this offline with the intention of uploading it once the power comes back on again at 4:30.
I could connect to the internet via my phone, but that gets properly pricey after a while (because data in SA is ridiculously expensive), so let’s just wait for (only slightly less expensive) fibre to come back on and then I’ll get it done.

Sadly, as an average SA consumer, I don’t have any choice when it comes to being loadshod. I pay my bills, I pay my taxes, and yet I still get very little in return. In the current (no pun intended) situation, nothing at all. And so you just have to get on with life. But that doesn’t mean that I must be content with the way that things are. Just because we are powerless (slight pun intended) to change the situation, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be irritated about it: normalising loadshedding is not a healthy way to deal with a problem which has been brought about by mismanagement, corruption and general kakocracy.

And so for several hours each day, we walk this weird tightrope between sighing acceptance and fully justified anger.

I fully admit though that it is, more than ever this time, beginning to wear me down a little.

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