My uncle Joe Seremane wrote: Joe Serema with Moses Kago Maruping and 12 others When the economy is starved of adequate electricity to keep it running (smoothly), there are normally several other sectors that would collapse as a result… and this is in the worst case (but who said that we are not there yet?). You see, with these chronic power outages, the following may (and some have)begin to fail, throwing the country into disarray: • Communication – most telephone sites/towers do not have backup generators, but they do have banks of batteries that are meant to keep the site up for up to 6hrs or so. But outages that run for up to 12hrs or more, most of these sites fail, throwing large sections of the country into a communications blackout! • Water reticulation – this may fail as a result of no electricity to power water pumps that push water through to us. In fact, a little birdy has informed me that some dry-tap-moments we have experienced were not necessarily as a result of water shedding, but simply lack of electric power! • Sewage system – you don’t want to imagine what may be happening at those ‘ponds’ when there is no electricity! • Banking – a lot of ATMs in town are not working half the time due to power outages. now, this may force people to go to banks in large numbers to withdraw their money so that they may have it WHEN they need it (a mini bank run, if you will), throwing the country into a banking panic (a financial crisis that occurs when many banks suffer runs at the same time). • Food crisis – as we speak, supermarkets that use ‘freshness’ as their selling point, like Pick ‘N Pay for instance, have cleared their fridges where they keep meat produce, and closed their butcheries. I haven’t checked Woolies, but I wouldn’t be surprised ele gore go setse ele ya rona hela… • Fuel shortage – very soon, most filling stations would follow suit and close shop, leaving only a few with backup generators to service us. This would lead to ‘artificial’ shortage of fuel, with long queues at those few filling stations, of people buying to stock up at home. The ‘increased demand’ will without a doubt, push up the price of fuel. Even those businesses that have backup generators that they now use as their main source of power (with BPC as backup) would then run out of diesel fuel to run those generators. Oh, and by extension, there will be no paraffin to fuel your lamps at home! But guess what, there will also be a shortage of candles, as manufacturers in South Africa would have cut down their production due to shortage of electricity in that country as well!!! • Sanitation – There would soon be this terrible stench in town, with huge blue flies all over the place, as the city council fails to collect rubbish at our homes and from skips around town! • Shortage of cooking gas – Those that use LPG for cooking (which I see most of us doing very soon), would soon find themselves without gas at home as their trusted distributor would have no electricity to run compressors that fill up their gas cylinders! • Crime escalation – With shortage of food and fuel, the rise in the number of the unemployed as organisations retrench staff, and the city perpetually dark, crime would escalate, with people wanting to relief others of their stockpiled supplies! The list of areas that would collapse is inexhaustible – I have not even touched the health sector, education, agriculture, transportation, mining, tourism, the paralysed army and police service with no radio communication and running vehicles. The list goes on. We might actually be closer to the Zim situation than we would care to imagine. If only we could get over this false sense of security we have, and be alive to fact that the poop might have actually already hit the fan, and we are now really in dire straits… Supamn: Temmet, he shld be my CAMPAIGN Manager!
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 07:07:15 +0000
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