Some Dark Humour

South Africa is in the grip of nationwide electricity blackouts. So how are people coping? With humour, of course.

Image source

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

- nexus_gene

Yes, they started implementing Stages 5 & 6.

https://twitter.com/Saagir12/status/1108000855792455680

- Saagir12

Another variant of this was:

https://twitter.com/kitty46kat/status/1108048775245955073

- kitty46kat

But how would you light them anyway?

https://twitter.com/thedarrenmaule/status/1108071457484140545

- thedarrenmaule

Still, people still take naughty selfies:

https://twitter.com/keenanwradio/status/1108032294198104064

- keenanwradio

. . . and can still go out and have fun no matter what Stage we get to:

https://twitter.com/keenanwradio/status/1108032294198104064

- keenanwradio

But that might not work:

https://twitter.com/Siya020402/status/1108057630084423680

- Siya020402

And who would you have fun with?

https://twitter.com/TheOpinion8d1/status/1108836740532523009

- TheOpinion8d1

Then Eskom really gets down to business:

https://twitter.com/LiciousRyan1/status/1108040044412063745

- LiciousRyan1

Things turn uglier:

https://twitter.com/Molebo_8/status/1107025905434664960

- Molebo_8

. . . and uglier:

https://twitter.com/robkowa/status/1108641585959522304

- robkowa

It gets so bad, that eventually:

https://twitter.com/NicolaDoubleU/status/1108068158764658690

- NicolaDoubleU

But, in the end, resistance is futile:

https://twitter.com/Omphile9/status/1108734027748556800

- Omphile9

. . . and all hope is lost.

https://twitter.com/LolasTheme1/status/1108015118229495809

- LolasTheme1

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Also posted on Weku, @tim-beck, 2019-03-22