South Africa is in the grip of nationwide electricity blackouts. So how are people coping? With humour, of course.
South Africa's monopoly electricity supply utility, Eskom, has seemingly run out of capacity and is imposing what it calls “load shedding”. Err.. blackouts. The causes of this include:
- Grossly incompetent managers
- Looting of the utility on a massive scale
- Deciding to erect two enormous coal-fired power stations itself, with such enormous cost overruns they are now the most expensive such plants in the world
- The two new power station don't work.
This load shedding is done in stages. Stage 1 is where they shed 1000 MW. Stage 2 is 2000 MW and so on to Stage 4 which, you guessed it is the Armageddon-like 4000 MW.
The jokes started when Stage 4 was reached, and people wondered what would happen at Stage 5. But no sooner had the unthinkable been joked about, when Eskom played a trick on the public.
https://twitter.com/nexus_gene/status/1107997100015603712
Yes, they started implementing Stages 5 & 6.
https://twitter.com/Saagir12/status/1108000855792455680
Another variant of this was:
https://twitter.com/kitty46kat/status/1108048775245955073
But how would you light them anyway?
https://twitter.com/thedarrenmaule/status/1108071457484140545
Still, people still take naughty selfies:
https://twitter.com/keenanwradio/status/1108032294198104064
. . . and can still go out and have fun no matter what Stage we get to:
https://twitter.com/keenanwradio/status/1108032294198104064
But that might not work:
https://twitter.com/Siya020402/status/1108057630084423680
And who would you have fun with?
https://twitter.com/TheOpinion8d1/status/1108836740532523009
Then Eskom really gets down to business:
https://twitter.com/LiciousRyan1/status/1108040044412063745
Things turn uglier:
https://twitter.com/Molebo_8/status/1107025905434664960
. . . and uglier:
https://twitter.com/robkowa/status/1108641585959522304
It gets so bad, that eventually:
https://twitter.com/NicolaDoubleU/status/1108068158764658690
But, in the end, resistance is futile:
https://twitter.com/Omphile9/status/1108734027748556800
. . . and all hope is lost.
https://twitter.com/LolasTheme1/status/1108015118229495809
