I think of myself as a responsible adult. But the energy crisis is a challenge
to my maturity. For some reason, where I live, we have our power cuts from 6pm
to 10pm. I don't know who decided that or why.
I have friends who live in places that have their power cuts between 10am and
2pm, when they are, mostly, out. Who decides who gets to stumble around in the
dark and who doesn't? And who decided it had to be for FOUR HOURS at a time? I
wasn't consulted. If I'd had a choice, I would've also chosen midday to cut my
power.
The result of this lack of consultation and unfair treatment means that I am not
really inclined to make much of a contribution to saving electricity beyond that
already forced upon me. Also, I don't always understand the load shedding story
at all. There was a story in one of the papers yesterday quoting Eskom saying
that some municipalities had already achieved their 10% savings and that Eskom
may soon be able to stop load shedding in these municipalities. Huh? Surely the
saving has been achieved by the municipality switching off electricity for hours
at a time? If the load shedding were to stop, wouldn't the saving immediately be
lost again?
It's too much. There's a much simpler way *1. It
involves not becoming more energy-conscious, but just moving more slowly. The
Spanish perfected this centuries ago and they are now one of the most successful
societies in the world. They take a four to five hour break in the working day
every day. It's called the Siesta. If we had a Siesta here we would go to work
at 7am (it's daylight saving too roughly an hour earlier for anyone involved
in commerce) and work five good hours, until noon. Then, at Siesta time, Eskom
could shut down all but emergency power supplies nationwide, until 5pm. When the
lights come back on, we would all work hard until 8pm and then go home or out to
eat.
We can save the country. Eskom gets the down-time it requires to patch up its
ailing kit and the country gets to take lunch and a nap, as it were. Ask any
doctor a series of catnaps during the day is healthy. And so are street lights
at night.
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has a hard task in Zimbabwe. The moment he crosses Robert
Mugabe he is finished as an interlocutor. But he is probably finished anyway, as
Mugabe and cronies simply will not accept an election defeat, recount or not,
rerun or not. Pretty soon, there'll be no conversation possible between Mbeki
and Mugabe which doesn't involve Mbeki suggesting in even the most obsequious
way that perhaps it might, er, be, er, indeed, time for Mugabe to retire
gracefully along with his generals.
It is such a pity Mbeki didn't stand up for what was right years ago when it was
obvious to everyone Mugabe was stealing elections, and just say that what was
happening in Zimbabwe was wrong. We never had to invade. We just had to say the
right thing. Failure then has really made all Mbeki's subsequent diplomacy a
sort of lie trying to craft a democratic outcome through a relationship with
an undemocratic man and pretending demo- cracy has really been a possibility all
along.
Domestically, that has had little effect until now. But today, with every
failure by Mbeki to make even the most basic expression of concern, the effect
is profound. For every Mbeki slippage makes Jacob Zuma look more like a
plausible successor.
And that's dangerous too, because if the Constitutional Court in the next few
weeks holds that the Scorpions' raids on Zuma and his lawyer were legal he will
surely stand trial and from what I understand the fraud
and racketeering case against Zuma is remarkably well founded *2. The
surest way to avoid a prison sentence then would be to
plea bargain *3. That is already being canvassed by
the Zuma camp and viewed with considerable
apprehension by former cabinet colleagues, for fear of what might come out in
the "bargain" *4. Can you imagine the politics in the ANC if Zuma were to
go down before the next election?
With acknowledgements to Peter Bruce
and Business
Day.
*1Indeed - switch off the aluminium
smelters.
*2Actually not - the fraud and racketeering cases against
Zuma are not particularly well founded.
The corruption case against Zuma is particularly well founded.
*3It is probably too late for that.
*4It's enough to make Pavlov's Dog look like an amateur.