Dear Editor
News last week of the finalisation of protocols dealing with Stage 9 load-shedding and beyond is nothing short of horrifying as South Africans struggle to cope with the 8 – 10 hours of blackouts a day imposed by the current Stage 6.
Stage 8 would see at least 12 hours a day without power in blocks of 4 hours and Stage 9 even worse. In addition, a move beyond Stage 8 would herald not only load-shedding, but electricity curtailment. This would require large energy users to further reduce their power usage. The negative impact on industry would be extreme, with a disastrous affect on jobs and the economy.
Four-hour blocks of load-shedding reduce the ability of Municipalities to provide water to residents as there is insufficient time for them to refill reservoirs when there is power. Cellphone towers begin to lose the ability to transmit signal after 3 hours, leaving rural towns and villages without communications during the 4 hour stretches. Smaller food retailers do not have the capacity to keep meat and other products cold for extended periods and there is a very real risk of contamination and food poisoning. Small businesses like hairdressers, printing shops, bakeries and seamstresses are unable to operate for hours on end without power, severely restricting their ability to generate an income and keep their businesses sustainable. Most cannot afford a generator or the fuel to run one.
The National Rationalisation Specifications (NRS) association, which is the body responsible for drafting the load-shedding protocols, has consulted extensively and estimates that they will submit the new schedule to the National Energy Regulator (NERSA) shortly. The purpose of these protocols is to ensure that all entities involved in the distribution and supply of electricity follow the same rules and procedures in the operationalising of load-shedding, in order to prevent a total grid collapse.
The Democratic Alliance welcomes the proactive approach by NRS to prepare for Stage 9 load-shedding and beyond. However, the idea of such extreme measures is abhorrent. With the establishment of the National Energy Crisis Committee and the development of the Energy Action Plan in 2022, we were assured that the energy crisis was receiving priority. 8 months later, with no improvement in the situation, we were advised of the appointment of the new Minister of Electricity, Dr Kgosientso Ramokgopa, who was tasked with driving the Energy Action Plan. Almost 5 months into this year and we have had 2 days without load-shedding. And now we are being asked to brace ourselves for Stage 10 in the coming winter.
South Africans cannot take much more. The President needs to finalise the powers of Minister Ramokgopa who, in turn, needs to deliver on the myriad promises made since last year. The government needs to stop dilly-dallying and do whatever it takes to resolve this crisis. Our country needs relief. Our people need action. And our energy crisis needs resolution.
Regards
Samantha Graham-Maré MP
DA Shadow Minister of Electricity
Demo Zero
Fun South African Fact: Despite the country’s status as a democratic republic, the Province of KwaZulu-Natal has a monarchy, specially provided for by the Constitution. Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu is the King of the Zulu Nation, has 27 kids and 6 wives and lives, literally, like a King!
Fadey
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.