THE STATE OF OUR STATE

THE STATE OF OUR STATE

This is starting for worry me a bit: our sustained and long-term unstable electricity supply seems to have an emotional effect on me: a generalised rising sense of anxiety that has become a background "noise" to my life (both waking and sleeping): increased average heart rate and blood pressure: higher predisposition to depressive moments; inappropriate and disproportionate temperamental outbursts; fantasies of mowing annoying people down with a machine gun or inflicting multiple thoracic or cranial stab-wounds with a rifle bayonet or crushing their skulls under a good old army boot so that the brains ooze out; general non-specific feelings of "not OK" - ness (?); writing such intensely personal shit on FB (perhaps an urge to "share"?)

Since I recognise that I've always been a bit of a fruitcake, in my own case, I'm not alarmed about any of the above. That's just me and I can handle it (but I have bolted an R4 bayonet to the inside of the driver's door of my car, just in case. I mean, this is South Africa*)

BUT

This worries me:

I think that these things disturb people generally:

A certain new element of randomness has been introduced into our lives:

We no longer have the control over our personal lives which we used to have. We have to use phone apps to note "load-shedding" interludes of between two-and-a-half and four hours in our days and nights, at least twice a day. These schedules are not at routine times, and even when they are posted they are not always adhered to. So there's that new element of randomness in your day.

In a country with very little work ethic, "loadshedding" just worsens our already notorious productivity problem.

In a country with very little employee loyalty or honesty and much laziness, the above problem is exacerbated by the tendency of employees (and in particular government employees) to use "loadshedding" as an excuse to do even less that they could do in circumstances which depend on the availability of electricity.

I sense a generalised and pervasive increase in anger, road rage, and aggression between strangers. Likewise an uptick in all sorts of crime, which was already a huge and ever-increasing problem ever since the accession of the ANC to power. Many urban communities seem to be establishing their own "eyes and ears" programs, and the private security industry has flourished.

There is a national sense of insecurity concerning the extent to which our illustrious government is actually on top of things and doing their job. The level of cynicism about this has gone through the roof.

The rate at which friends and family are emigrating from SA has become ridiculous - in spite of the Rand exchange rate - people are cutting their losses and leaving. I'm starting to feel kind of lonely!

Does this strike a chord with anyone, or is it just me?

*PS: "Loadshedding" is a bullshit word. It suggests that the power outages are a voluntary and controlled exercise, when in fact it's the sort of thing that the captain of the Titanic would have liked to tell his passengers.

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HARRY FRIEDLAND
MARIMBA
18 January 2023

*Once, when getting ready to disembark from a Kulula flight in Joburg, the air hostess who was giving her farewell message to the passengers added this: "Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that you are now entering Johannesburg. If you are not carrying any dangerous weapons, we can issue them to you at the door." Beautiful, that was. I think a few American tourists refused to get off the plane.