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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: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:53AM (8 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:29PM (5 children)
Actually no..., infrastructure, the lights..infrastructure, etc. used to work in South Africa before. Now they don't.
This is also why "diversity" is nonsense. The smartest people, most qualified for the jobs, no matter what race, should get the job.
You don't see basketball teams full of Asians in the United States because everyone knows that generally blacks (and some whites, along with some Asians), are the best for the job. It is by merit.
Same goes for this.. The people who are capable of running the powerplants (and the government) are no longer in charge, because the majority of the population (which is now in charge), have too low IQs and don't know any better. During Apartheid, they didn't vote, so this wasn't a problem.
Now this doesn't mean that black people shouldn't vote, or that only white ones should.. because there are plenty of dumb white people too (just not as many as a percentage). Perhaps a very basic IQ test before allowing people to vote, so smart people of any race can vote and dumb ones of any race cannot?
Not sure what the answer is but basically post-apartheid countries have all become basket cases (like the rest of Africa) and people who are too dumb are now making the decisions. Democracies only work if there is an average society IQ that is high enough. Otherwise, you get this..
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Wednesday April 24 2019, @01:16PM (2 children)
It only ever worked if you ignored the non-white parts of the country.
Nice try....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @02:40PM
no..actually, that is exactly the point...it never does..
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:36PM
so it's whitey's fault they couldn't de-black the blacks completely? yeah, fuck off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:22PM
While not a perfect solution, this one will work for you:
1) Put on an overcoat with deep, reinforced pockets.
2) Fill all pockets with rocks.
3) Walk into the sea.
4) ... ?
5) We profit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 24 2019, @10:29PM
I notice pe1rxq seems to think that wasn't true in the non-white parts of the country. What's your take on that? It also ignores that GDP per capita has gone up significant since.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday April 25 2019, @04:40AM (1 child)
It has nothing to do with the parent, but since it's an actual real response to the article I posted it there to front-run the hundreds of off-topic gibberish US political shitfest / racist comments that the discussion turns into.
Incidentally, the above was from a former Escom accountant who got fired for repeatedly pointing out what the Guptas were upta with Escom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 26 2019, @06:08PM
I'll be a American racist before a European dhimmi any day.