Which politician has an uncle in the plug business?

IBOUGHT a new microwave oven the other day after my old one exploded, giving my cats an awful fright. Microwave ovens are much of a muchness, as far as I am concerned. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But I was impressed by this particular model for one good reason: it came fitted with a standard three-pin South African-type plug. Now that’s a rare thing in this age of Chinese imports. Most of the electrical goods we buy these days come fitted with moulded-on two-point plugs, sometimes with a flat moulding and sometimes with a round one.

Most South African homes, on the other hand, still have three-point wall sockets, so it means every socket needs to have one or two adapters nearby to cope with the various appliances.

Some years ago the government passed legislation making it illegal to import electrical appliances unless they were fitted with suitable 15 amp plugs. That made sense. And it wasn’t asking too much of manufacturers to fit goods destined for the South African market with three-point plugs.

They have to fit different plugs to things going to America and those destined for France, so why not do the same for South Africa?

Every additional adapter plugged into a wall socket adds a little more likelihood of an electrical accident. In households like mine – and many others I know – each wall socket looks like a miniature substation, with cords leading to multipoint adapters fitted with several two-point adapters each.

And probably an extension cord fitted with two more adapters. One cord goes to the fan heater, one to charge the computer battery and two more to charge the toothbrush and beard-trimmer, not to mention the rechargeable lantern for use when Eskom fails us.

I suspect that some wily politician has an uncle in the electrical adapter business, and that’s why the original legislation quietly went away. That’s the way business works in our country.

I recently bemoaned the lack of standardisation in the electronics world, and Michael Stuttaford wrote agreeing, and added that he had a whole drawer full of light bulbs of various types, some with bayonet fittings, some with large Edison screws, some with small Edison screws and others with two little pins protruding from the base. From personal experience, I am pretty sure that every time a lamp blows in his house it’s precisely the one type he doesn’t have at the time.

He also wondered why car manufacturers couldn’t agree on which side to place the windscreen wiper switch and the direction indicator. If you have more than one car in the family, you’re quite likely to travel about switching on your windscreen wipers every time you are about to turn a corner.