André, Johan, keep the lights on
The Tembisa 10 may be a figment of somebody’s imagination, but Eskom’s Misery Twins are not
Thursday. The latest wildcat strike by Durban Solid Waste is over — for now — and the vans are out super early to pick up two weeks of accumulated rubbish.
This is good.
The pile of garbage outside the bowling club — my nearest voting station — was starting to fester, and might have been a bit of a turn-off for ward 33’s electorate by the time Monday comes around.
Despite the long-waited refuse removal, the ward 33 Whatsapp group is still wilding, with howls of indignation from the locals about the rubbish in the streets.
There’s four days to go until South Africa’s 11th election since 1994.
Four sleeps until I make my X and I, like many of my compatriots, remain in the dark.
Not just about whether the Tembisa 10 ever existed — Wednesday’s “press briefing” provided no clarity about this — but also about whether Eskom lahnee André de Ruyter has placed us on level four, three or two of load-shedding.
I was shocked to learn that Eskom’s Misery Twins — De Ruyter and chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer — actually exist, unlike their Tembisa counterparts.
Perhaps André turns off the lights during the day and Johan works the night shift, which would explain
the fact that they so seldom appear together in public.
Unless the footage of the Silver Foxes together was doctored.
Until now, I thought they were the same guy, doubling up in both roles to draw two salaries from the power entity; punishing us and the public purse because we called him a racist.
My bad.
Then again, all white people look the same.
The briefing by the lahnee’s lahnee, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, on Wednesday evening didn’t shed much light on whether
we will have power on voting day.
PG mumbled a lot, an indication that neither he nor André know whether they can keep the lights on, but don’t have the guts to admit it.
It’s our 11th election, given that the previous polls excluded the vast majority of South Africa’s population and were only aimed at perpetuating apartheid and white supremacist rule in one way or another.
I didn’t vote before 1994 — except in union elections and ANC branch meetings.
I figured voting in whites-only elections would be like going to the army, so I didn’t.
It made sense then.
Still does.
It’s also something I remind myself of every time I don’t feel like voting. I didn’t cover the 1994 elections. I was working for Cosatu’s peace unit and got drafted into the ANC election campaign as a propagandist, speechwriter and general fixer, which was a blast.
And an education.
The roughest part was getting jammed up at Dukuduku by the Inkatha amabutho who had arrived to make sure that then soon-to-be president Nelson Mandela didn’t get a chance to speak to the masses, as was planned.
We knew things had turned to shit when we saw the convoy of ANC vehicles heading southwards — away from Dukuduku and towards Mtubatuba — as we neared the forest.
It turns out the amabutho, tooled up to the nines with G3 rifles handed out by the Kwazulu Bureau for Natural Resources, had cornered a group of ANC youngsters in a clearing and were preparing to slaughter them.
The cops were there in full force, standing by, grinning, waiting for the killing to start.
The next thing I know, I’m on a bus heading into the clearing to get the youngsters, while Sipho Gcabashe, one of Cosatu’s peace negotiators, talks to the Inkatha leadership.
The driver starts screaming as the windscreen goes but, somehow, a combination of Gcabashe’s negotiating skills (fortunately it turned out that Gcabashe’s mother and Inkatha leader Blessed Gwala’s mother were members of the same clan) and my whiteness — the amabutho were programmed to kill black people, not abelungu — got us and about 60 terrified Young Lions out of there alive.
The highlight — apart from officially ending two centuries of colonial rule — was arriving at Ohlange on voting day at the tail end of Mandela’s five-million car convoy for a day I’d believed would come, but never thought I would see.
People were going mad, jumping up and down and screaming at every car that passed, as if we were all some kind of liberators.
Perhaps they mistook me for Alec Erwin
Or Carl Niehaus.
I thought they were the same guy doubling up in both roles to draw two salaries. Then again, all white people look the same