President Cyril Ramaphosa signs a book of condolence at Lancaster House on September 18, 2022 in London, England. Foreign dignitaries, heads of state and other VIPs have visited Westminster Hall to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state prior to her funeral on Monday. (Photo by Jonathan Hordle - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Monday.
I’m wondering if the irony of sitting in the dark discussing which party faction will take power in December is lost on the members of the ANC who have spent the weekend caucusing by candlelight.
Or on the host of would-be presidential candidates, all of whom have put up their hands to say pick me and none of whom appear to have any idea how to get the lights back on — or any real interest in doing so.
I doubt it.
Like many of my fellow South Africans, I’m neither shocked nor surprised by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to skip the after-tears at Buckingham Palace and return home immediately after Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral because of Eskom’s decision to move us to stage six of load-shedding.
After all, the head of state was forced to do pretty much the same thing in January 2020, when he bailed on the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, the last time Eskom chief executive Andre de Donker gave us the stage-six treatment.
I’m wondering, though, how the president hopes to address us, given that the majority of the population will not have electricity to turn on the TV, power up the laptop or turn on their phone.
Perhaps De Donker will bring us back to stage two for long enough for the president to tell us we’re moving to stage six — indefinitely and with immediate effect — before plunging us back into darkness for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps the presidency will simply circulate a video of Ramaphosa in a set of overalls fixing the wiring at Koeberg — or drying the coal at Medupi with a hairdryer — given the lack of power for him to address us live and direct.
If I were Ramaphosa I would be getting paranoid by now — and not just because half of the ANC’s national executive committee has just declared their intention to take his job at the party’s elective conference in December.
Every time the president heads off to electricity-richer climes to charge his phone and leaves his deputy David Mabuza in charge of the shop, De Ruyter moves us to stage six and the president has to come home and deal with the mess.
It’s a bit rough, actually.
I worked for an editor who treated me a bit like Eskom and De Ruyter are treating Ramaphosa.
Every time I went on leave, headed off for a bit of a breather, I got called back to work because of some news development or other.
It carried on like that until the editor left and moved on to another title to spoil somebody else’s holidays . . .
I was eventually retrenched — truncated leave days or not — a fate Ramaphosa might share, if any of the contenders for his job come right in December, so there are definitely lessons for the head of state in this.
Somewhere.