Lights, Camera...Load Shedding
I will start this with an apology to all my South African readers because I expect that you have all probably had enough of load shedding and frankly I wouldn't blame you. However, this piece is also a bit of celebration of the enduring South African spirit and how resilient you have to be to put up with a failure of this scale. To my non-South African readers, you might just learn a thing or two about what motivates South Africans to leave the country in search of a place where the lights stay on.
For some context (and primarily for the non-South Africans in the room), ‘load shedding’ is a process where the main power supply is switched off and then back on, for set periods of time during the day or night, to ease pressure off the national energy supply. In short it’s a way to manage too little power and too many people wanting to use that power.
This system of power-cuts, is not new to South Africa and the first scheduled power cuts occurred in the latter half of 2007. Since then and for 16 years, South Africa's power system has been deteriorating at a fairly consistent rate. Currently power is being switched off for up to 12 hours a day. The issue is so entrenched, that there is now a formal set of ‘stages’ described for each level of load-shedding, ranging from being a pain in the backside at Stage 1, to being potentially disastrous at Stage 8 - South Africa is now in Stage 8.
South Africa’s power woes stem from a significant lack of investment in its power generation system, coupled with rampant corruption and finished off with a successive series of political leaders, basically burying their heads in the sand. By the time anyone was willing and prepared to do anything about it, the problems had become so large and so entrenched, that it would be like turning the QEII around with a teaspoon for a paddle.