OPINION: Did the US embassy get us confused with Westbury – or is Westbury what we are fast becoming? asks Kevin Ritchie.
THIS week the US Embassy issued an advisory to its citizens living in or visiting South Africa. It’s a horror story: “Prepare for the worst, stock up on water for three days, tinned food, batteries, medicine, first aid supplies and memorise the phone numbers of your nearest and dearest. And when the power shuts off eventually, prepare for riots and scenes from the Walking Dead.”
Apart from the cute optimism of getting any Generation Z kid to memorise anything – obviously US power banks don’t work on cellphones during riots – the average person on the Baragwanath bus might be forgiven for thinking that US diplomats believe they’ve been posted to a war zone, rather than the industrial engine of the African Century.
Our Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor certainly thinks it’s odd. But then again, she is cosseted by blue light convoys in her luxury German state sedan, buttressed by SAP VIP protection and gated ministerial estates complete with well-fed diesel generators. Much like Marie Antoinette, Pandor’s take on the lived lives of her and Cyril Ramaphosa’s subjects is removed from reality.
As it is, the rest of us have been stocking up for ages, opting out if we can afford to or investing in tinned food or long-life milk if we can’t. We might not have hotels that we have identified in times of need for shelter from the rampaging mobs, but most of us have earmarked pubs and taverns who will be able to show the sports matches during load shedding and supply ice-cold beer too.
The Presidency isn’t so sure … Cyril the Immaculate completed his journey to Cyril the Emasculate this week. From Cyril the Meek, he made a valiant bid for Cyril the Sage, recasting our international greylisting as an opportunity to learn. Effectively being greylisted means the adults in the rest of the world can’t trust us to investigate financial crimes. Ordinary South Africans need no reminding. If you live in the townships, the cops are a dead loss and if you live in the suburbs, the cops do little more than issue docket numbers so that you can claim from insurance. Speaking of which, insurers are now refusing to underwrite losses from power surges caused by load shedding.
These are all learnings for us to take to heart. But the lessons don’t end there. After promising to address load shedding and even appoint a brand new “minister of electricity”, we learnt this week that Cyril the Emasculate believes he does not have a legal duty to end load shedding. Apparently, that’s the job of the municipalities.
We are the unled in danger of becoming the undead. In Westbury, it’s happening already; a massive Hobbesian state of nature where everything gets shed: power, water, police. And 13 people shot at the weekend. Two dead. Not a peep out of the government, but thankfully no banal utterances from the Twat in the Hat either.
Did the US embassy get us confused with Westbury – or is Westbury what we are fast becoming?
* Kevin Ritchie is a seasoned former newspaper editor and current media consultant. He writes the weekly Carping Point column.
