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Once the highly infrastructure developed economic powerhouse of Africa, South Africans these days are more interested in the outlook for rolling blackouts. The country’s most-downloaded app provides schedules, alerts and forecasts for power outages.
Eskom, the state power monopoly, is struggling to generate enough electricity to meet needs, and has re-introduced a byzantine system of rotating outages known as “load-shedding.” On February 11th a whopping 4,000 megawatts of power, enough to power some 3m households, was cut from the national grid to prevent it from collapsing. Some businesses have bought generators and battery systems; others close during outages. In big cities, there is chaos at rush hour as traffic lights go dark. The blackouts suit copper-cable thieves, who can steal without fear of electrocution. And when the electricity is switched backed on, substations sometimes explode, resulting in secondary outages.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2019/02/21/why-the-lights-keep-going-out-in-south-africa
[paywall: you can see the whole article in 'anonymous view' through startpage.com]
More on the situation:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/267263-south-africas-electricity-system-is-falling-apart-and-it-is-much-bigger-than-just-eskom.html
How to bring back the lights in South Africa?
(Score: 2, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:03AM (15 children)
aaaannnnd, there it is.
I'm a bit surprised I had to scroll down this far to find it, but there it is, pretending IQ has any bearing on anything. Why don't you go ahead and tell us about state's rights now, and how much happier "those people" were when they had no responsibilities or whatever the justification is this week for being an arsehole.
Yes, it is, and no, we don't.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:07AM (5 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:09AM (4 children)
FTFM. And such people aren't going to become less racist by you feeding their appeals for attention either.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:27AM (3 children)
No, I suppose not. This is a place to discuss things though.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:31AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:10AM (1 child)
No, I was just scrolling through the comments.
I expected to find a comment like that, and others did too. The first comment in the thread is
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:36AM
Exactly my point. People were trolling for bad comments and they got what they wanted. Who knew?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:08AM
I wouldn't count on it..
Actually I was in South Africa once, and asked our black Taxi Driver that now that apartheid is over, things are better now right?
He said no, it was much better in the apartheid era. Stuff (like the lights) worked.. it was safe, there was work and money to be made... not like now.
This was a black guy saying this.. in South Africa.. years after apartheid was over..
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:12AM (5 children)
Actually, intelligence and education has a helluva lot to do with almost everything. Yes, of course GP is doing his racist thing, implying that all dem blackies is just dumber than monkeys. Still, intelligence is a necessity, and so is education. Ideally, intelligent people are always educated, along with a lot of less intelligent people. But let's not pretend that intelligence is meaningless. You know better, I know better, and racist GP knows better. You'll have to state your case better, to refute the obvious racism above.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:21AM
Fair enough. What I should have said is "IQ is almost always poorly measured" which is (almost) always true.
Your points about intelligence and education are entirely correct.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:46AM (3 children)
Intelligence is a function of education.
Education is a function of culture.
Culture has a lot of momentum. It takes generations to change it. How smart you are has a lot to do with how fertile the environment is during your developmental years.
It's not about race. It's about the culture of a people. White American rednecks are about as dumb as any uneducated third-world people of color. They just happen to have been born in a more affluent place. That doesn't make them smart. In fact, it proves how much dumber they are considering the immense opportunities within their reach.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Wednesday April 24 2019, @04:12AM
Sadly, the South African government has done for the public education system what it has done for the electricity business.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @11:57AM
Knowledge is a function of education. Intelligence is part hereditary and part environmental. You're claim would be that taking someone with Downs syndrome and giving them the same education as an individual of average intelligence would result in equal outcomes. That is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:45PM
you're ignorant or dishonest. in a general sense: hillbillies are ignorant, but not stupid. blacks are ignorant and stupid. there is a difference.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Wednesday April 24 2019, @04:03AM (1 child)
I understand you disagree, but he at least proposed a solution. We'd like to hear your solution, not your opinion about his -isms.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 24 2019, @09:52AM
Oh come on now, no he didn't.
My solution? There isn't one. I am pretty sure that when the ANC begins to lose their grip violence will happen in South Africa, and it will be bad.