Sylvia, have some KFC on taxpayers

As people get outraged about MP and National Council of Provinces (NCOP) deputy chair Sylvia Lucas’ comments that “load shedding isn’t the end of the world”, they should know that she has some form in the “let them eat cake” stakes. However, in her case, it was KFC.

As the premier of the Northern Cape in 2013, her office defended her spending R50 000 on fast food during her first 10 weeks in the job. The Sunday Times quoted a spokesperson for the premier as saying Lucas’ spending was “not excessive” and was “totally blown out of proportion”.

But trying to explain to the newspaper why it was critical that an important personage such as her had to be well fed and hydrated to carry out the important business of the ANC, she inadvertently said something which sums up the ruling party’s apparatchiks.

She said: “How would we have eaten if we didn’t use taxpayers’ money?”

To someone who has lived off the fat of the taxpayer land for a considerable part of her political career, Lucas clearly is not fazed by load shedding, because she is important enough to have a government-supplied generator.

Yet, her very attitude – and her previous tone-deaf arrogance about the burning of government money – encapsulates the arrogance with which our ANC overlords rule us. With every day which passes, they grow more and more estranged from the struggle of ordinary folk and more ensconced in their fantasy world, where the battle against the “challenge” of power outages “will soon be over”.

Living in a completely different reality to that of most South Africans may insulate you from them, but it bodes ill for the overall future of the country.

If you can’t comprehend the tragedy of load shedding, how will you “get” other things, like crime, National Health Insurance, unemployment... the list is endless.