Postcolonial Humbug
It’s barely 11am on a weekend morning and we’ve already had two bouts of what the locals call loadshedding. It means the electricity company turns off the electricity supply to parts of the city; in various parts of the country. Allegedly they do this because there’s not enough electricity to go around, so they ration it out at peak demand times. In practice this means you have no electricity between say 8 and 10:30 am on a Saturday morning or 6 to 8am on a Tuesday. In some instances, you get a double dose of load shedding, so in addition to the morning slot, you’ll have no electricity again between 6 and 8:30pm. It’s all very well organised, you get a schedule in advance showing which parts of the city are going to be without electricity at what times. There’s even an app to keep you updated if you’re into that sort of thing. The other thing is that sometimes there is load shedding that’s outside the schedule the power company has published. So you can find yourself caught out or literally locked out if you did not make plans ahead of time to disengage the garage door from its auto operation to manual.
Of course, depending on the size and extent of your household, you could have far more complicated issues because there’s suddenly no electricity for at least two and half hours. Sometimes longer. And without warning. It can also affect your business if you are brave enough to operate one in this climate. It affects school if you’re attending class online. It affects the traffic lights which only serves to show how few locals are both literate and possess a valid driver’s licence. The lack of electricity is a pain to live with but the locals are not taking this lying down. Over the past fifteen (yes, that’s 15) years that load shedding has been a regular occurrence in the holy land, many people have added private back-up systems into their homes, offices, businesses and lives in general. More recently, there’s been potable water supply issues in several parts of the holy land, so the good people of the holy land have gone and added private back-up systems to collect and store rainwater and other measures to avoid the inconvenience and trauma associated with being without a regular water supply in their homes, offices and businesses.
None of these adaptations that people in the holy land have made are particularly ground-breaking. In fact, in the mid nineties, folks in the holy land added private back-up and front-line security to their homes, offices and businesses as they lost faith in the government police service. Then as the government owned and operated post office service was slowly bled to death by corruption, theft and other postcolonial humbugs, folks in the holy land added private postal and courier services to get their postal services attended to without losing most of it to theft or the sheer unwillingness to just do what was required. Folks in the holy land added private healthcare as the government owned and operated system developed several and repeated cases of postcolonial humbugs. Following on from healthcare, folks in the holy land migrated to private education for their progeny, although there are more than a few notable and commendable government owned and operated schools that rank right up there with the best anywhere in the world.
In the early 2000s there was a blooming of the private option for potable water and buying-in bottled water for drinking is now so common, it’s safe to say that quality drinking water is also privatised in the holy land. The government owned and operated train service is in such shambles, it won’t be long before it tops the list of how-not-to case studies for ivy league business schools. So folks in the holy land have added private road transport to compensate for a government that is incapable of operating a regular, scheduled train service in any of the major cities of the holy land. Going on over twenty years into democracy and there’s no safe, comfortable, affordable high speed rail service between the highveld mine dump village and the popular domestic tourist destination on the east coast, a mere 600 kilometres away. Instead folks in the holy land take their lives in their hands in private cars, private minibus taxis and in private planes. The government owned and operated airline, the first on the continent, only recently started operating again — after being sold off for a song, in some shady deal to some politically connected elites. Yes, more of that post colonial humbug again.
Given how many essential public and social goods have been replaced by privately owned options, it’s no real wonder that the government owned and operated services are suffering. They don’t have the higher LSM market share buying and using their services and so lose out on a whole juicy chunk of profitability. Without that spectacular, creamy, eye popping topping of profitability, the government owned and operated goods and services fail to bring any of the boys to the yard. Instead the boys are owning and operating their own yards, making their own milkshakes and selling them by the millions to the folks in the holy land desperate for things that until not so long ago were considered normal and commonplace.
Of course, this whole experience will smack of privilege to many people in the holy land who have never had and still don’t have electricity; potable water; safe, reliable, affordable public transport; healthcare; education; postal services or ever bothered with milkshakes, let alone artisanal ones dripping tasty toppings. And given the shameful minimum wage levels in the holy land, those folks are unlikely to ever access or enjoy the private options. Which is exactly why the government owned and operated social goods and services need to operate spectacularly well. Like duh.
Postcolonial Humbug is just real life in the holy land.
© Jesh Baker, 2022 AD
