Please answer each question as briefly as possible
Fact: In the year 2006, a fully functioning province in a modern, first-world country was brought to its knees by massive breakdowns in its electricity supplies. Emergency services were rendered helpless, hospitals were unable to perform life-saving surgery, other vital medical procedures had to be abandoned. Communications across the province were disrupted for more than a week. Vehicular traffic was locked in gridlocks many kilometres long. No electric trains ran. People either could not get to work at all or were several hours late. Cold storage units shut down and mountains of fresh food rotted, innumerable tons of fruit and other export products had to be junked. Stores both small and large were closed. Many other expensive penalties were paid. The so-called electricity ‘outages” cost the province’s economy hundreds of millions of rand.
Question: What is the name of the country and its darkened province?
Fact: The reason given for initial failure in electricity supply was ‘misty conditions” which, together with some residual ash deposited on power lines some months before by bush fires, caused the supply to trip. In the ensuing period of blackouts, even more bizarre excuses and explanations were advanced.
Question: Do you know if the official who made up this pathetic excuse has or is receiving any treatment for substance abuse?
Fact: A superannuated nuclear power station in the same province was unable to provide its normal contribution to the national electricity grid because, during sloppily supervised maintenance work on a crucial part of one of its two generators, some carefree technician dropped a large bolt into the works, damaging the generator beyond repair.
Question: The power station in question is of the same basic design and age as an infamous Ukrainian one where, in 1986, some equally carefree and sloppily supervised technicians dropped their own version of a bolt into the works. What was the name of that nuclear power station?
Fact: The drop of a single bolt into the nuclear power station generator had the knock-on effect of revealing an almost total lack of forward planning by both the government of the first-world country and its monopolistic parastatal electricity supplier.
Question: Does the parastatal or the government that appointed its directors give a toss?
Fact: The CEO of the parastatal monopolistic electricity supplier is invulnerable on a five-year contract. He receives a salary of just under R1-million a month to include ‘performance bonuses” amounting to R5-million a year which are approved by his nine directors. His daily crust amounts to something in excess of R30 000.
Question: How does this remuneration compare with that of the president of this first-world country? Is it half, double or 12 times the president’s whack?
Fact: The nine directors of the monopolistic parastatal electricity supplier each earn just over half a million rands a month — they also receive cornucopian pats on the back. At R15 000 a day that is six times what the president of the country earns.
Question: Does this surprise you?
Fact: According to the CEO of the monopolistic parastatal electricity supplier, his extravagant salary is ‘market-related”. The cynical will say that argument is out of touch with reality, that in the world of commerce such obscenely prodigal salaries are tied to results; also that big corporations that pay those kinds of salaries don’t like being exposed to civil damages actions for hundreds of millions of rands.
Question: If they were out in an unforgiving commercial arena, do you think the CEO of the monopolistic parastatal electricity supplier and his lavishly rewarded directors would survive less or more than 10 minutes?
Fact: The first-world country in which these Kafkaesque events have taken place currently is preparing to be host for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Question: Do you think that, with only four years to go, the pitiful efforts of the monopolistic parastatal electricity power supplier and its Cabinet masters are being viewed with alarm by the organisers at Fifa?
Fact: The outage outrage of the country’s public has been expressed in all branches of the media. All that the public has been served up with, by way of explanation or hints of accountability, is a suffocatingly patronising statement from the top presidential spokesman. In avuncular tones the spokesman instructed everyone not to panic or spread alarm, gave his assurance that everything is under control, that the province concerned will not shiver in its socks a month or three hence in the unlikely event that power failures again kick in.
Question: Does that sort of statement reassure you that the province and a couple of others like it are not in for a winter of very deep discontent?
Fact: That the spokesman’s message is being received with cynicism is born of sorry experience. No one of any appreciable intelligence believes that sort of bollocks.
Question: If you live in the province in question, have you recently tried to buy a gas lamp or stove or a small electricity generator in shops devoid of stock?
Bonus Question: Given all the above, do you think Beaufort West’s Mr Truman Prince would probably do a better job than the existing yo-yos?