We are all just struggling humans

IS IT not unfortunate that we require a common cause, a common catastrophe, a common inconvenience to unite all the people of the land?

The reintroduction of loadshedding, it seems, has served at least one useful purpose: it has given most motorists, (including some taxi drivers as well) some semblance of empathy, patience and manners at intersections where robots have failed. In the main, motorists are behaving for a change.

The other area where change is visible is at malls, where shoppers somehow seem to show less aggression towards fellow customers as their anger is now directed to a common enemy called mismanagement of a public utility.

There is a common dialogue that permeates the air of the festive season.

I have overheard some shoppers empathising with shopkeepers who struggle financially through the rest of the year and rely on the usual busy shopping spree at the year end to keep them from undergoing liquidation, but now having to contend with the downtime of no electricity, resulting in business being done in the dark with all the inconvenience, like security issues, that come with it.

People of all races feel the pain. The darkness causes skin colour to be indistinguishable. Perhaps we need a few more common calamities to see one another as just equal struggling humans. E S ESSA Durban