electricity outages part of deliberate strategy

I find myself in a quandary.

If I accept the idea that the failure to take action over the growing threat of declining electrical capacity is somehow typical of post-colonial African experience, and reflects some curious common thread of self-destructive, short sightedness on the part of the new ruling class, then I invite opprobrium for thinking inherently ‘racist’ thoughts.

That multiple generation of what Coetzee [JM] calls “dishonoured” white men, that by demographic definition includes me, was brought up on a litany of tales, reinforced by empirical experience, regarding, for instance, the sugar, that runs out the moment one returns from a shopping expedition. “Why didn’t you tell me it had run out one berates some hapless ‘servant’; only to receive the perplexing and inherently logical response that “It hadn’t run out when you had set off for the shops, there was a spoonful left.” That these tales probably featured in Jane Austin’s catalog of experiences of the backstairs workforce in the colonial homeland is always carefully ignored.

Ali Mazrui suggested that there was an issue with time horizons in African culture. The continent is inherently a place that has no winter [with some isolated exceptions] and that therefore the development of a planning culture never needed to take root.

Whatever the rationale, the fact remains that received folklore has it that this weakness in planning and anticipating problems before they occur is a strong feature in our society, as exemplified by the decision not to increase electricity generating capacity when it should have been increased. To suggest this though, could be construed, by those who choose to, as a ‘racist’ position, it is also irrelevant that there is a lone 'honorary black' in the planning team he had to take orders from his boss, and in any event has never seemed particularly up to speed..

There is a counter argument to this, which holds that incompetence is a fostered act: an action associated with revolt. This argument, which intermittently pops up in the Bloggosphere, seems to suggest that breaking things is part of resistance politics. The idea is to drive the foolish white man crazy by breaking his most cherished things, in the hopes that he will get pissed off and leave the continent for a less hostile place. I would perceive this to be a sound strategy equatable with the Russian propensity for so called “scorched earth” solutions.

So you perceive the quandary.

If I perceive the present potential catastrophe over electricity supply constraints to be an outcome founded in neglect, short sightedness and broad incompetence, which is somehow “typical” of the class of citizen making the errors, I risk being referred to as a ‘racist’.

On the other hand if I review the alternative scenario… that the action is intentional, then I have to wonder at such a scorched earth policy that would see the country brought to its knees in order to rid then State of a despised enemy.

I wrote in an earlier blog about how Our present leader was a closet wannabee Verwoerdt, so wracked by ideological rage, coupled with a deep and abiding hatred for all so-called “white” people; and surrounded by sycophants of the same ilk, that such an issue [of power cutting] could occur as a simple unintended outcome.

Nonetheless it would still remain intentional, an outcome of what Xolelo Mancu [sic] called the President’s obsession with “racial ascendancy’ in the SAFM debate on Monday 4 Feb 2008.

When I suggested to the various hard-line members of my class that I have encountered routinely, over the past few weeks, since this bizarre electrical meltdown became apparent, that the entire outcome is as a result of deliberate policy choices, and therefore intentional, however poorly understood, the immediate effect is outraged denial … Then followed by a determined position that stupidity is the core problem; and when this “stupidity” is somehow remedied then everything will be ok. This seems almost like the guy nailed to the rails in the face of an oncoming train suggesting that if he turns sharply at the moment of impact it wont hurt so much, or that perhaps that the train is a figment of someone else’s imagination. either way denial is met be reciprocal denial.

Similarly When I suggest to my wife, a workaholic who makes the very word workaholic seem idle and shiftless, that she should rest more, and that it is ok for people fighting off cancer and the effects of chemotherapy to chill out for a few hours each day… she changes the subject: … “Yes, yes, yes:” she says, "i am 'loadshedding' far more efficiently than the Sate" she says as all her hair falls out... and then changes the subject….

And yet I feel comforted knowing that the destruction of the old South Africa is being done with deliberate intent: a part of Bakunin's "revolutionary creed".

I can understand deliberate, even if the intent seems irrational. Of course it only seems irrational to those who preferred to live in a more orderly way. It isn’t though if one takes the long view, that our present leadership sees the eradication of all that it considers to be invaders from the continent as its core objective; and what is a decade or two of sacrifice, especially someone else’s… The country is not yet liberated they assert and as they [the struggle heroes] used to say “ no normality until liberation” or was it “no education before liberation”. No matter.

No the insane pretensions of ideologically convicted citizens are understandable whether or not we support them. It’s this naughty idea of inherent stupidity that is so scary.

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