Blackouts –
tail wagging
the dog?
THERE'S a strange, frenetic quality to our current round of load-shedding. Why are blackouts called in the middle of the night? It's never happened before.
Why do the lights suddenly come on again in the middle of the night, so you have to get up and switch everything off again? That too is new.
How long does this continue? Is the tail wagging the dog?
Hey, who remembers all the talk about the Tugela Basin? The way the Tugela and its tributaries could generate enough hydro-electric power to serve five mega-cities the size of greater Johannesburg and still leave an outflow at Tugela Mouth sufficient to serve a city the size of Greater London? (Could our toasters not do with a bit of that electricity today?)
Was this bar-room talk? No, it was serious. Hydrologists, engineers, economists and others earned PhDs studying the Tugela Basin from the 1940s onward. The old Natal Provincial Administration had the Town and Regional Planning Commission working on the Basin right up to the 1990s. Hydro-electric sites were identified. All was planned.
We were told the Basin would generate electricity to irrigate the province's fertile plains as never before. A golden era lay ahead.
But what happened? Nuffink!
The suspicion is that the old Nats were not keen to develop a province that consistently voted against them; nor do the same for a Zulu homeland that refused to take "independence".
It's not even clear if the present incumbents are aware of the Tugela Basin and its potential. Would it not be worth blowing the dust off all that research? It could be an alternative to those pesky coal-fired power stations, with their pollution and propensity to break down - if they ever do get properly built.
Ballot overprint?
INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener notes in his latest grumpy newsletter that more than 29 000 South Africans resident abroad have been registered to vote in the forthcoming election.
"This feels like a big number until the IEC also announce that they are planning to print 50 million ballot papers.
"But there are just 23 million eligible local voters. Who got the contract to print at least twice as many papers as required? There must be a simple explanation – like expecting power cuts to halve production perhaps."
Potshot?
AN AUSSIE was busy with his mobile phone in Nimbin, New South Wales, when he was approached by a fellow with a bow and arrow.
But the approach was not amicable. The fellow had his bow drawn, the arrow pointed at the guy with the mobile, according to Huffington Post.
What do you do in such a fraught situation? Why, you take a photograph of course. This is the age of the smartphone.
Next an arrow hit the phone, the arrowhead smashing right through but stopping there. The phone itself was knocked back into the holder's face, giving him a slight cut.
It could have been a lot more serious, the police said afterwards. The man who fired the arrow has been charged with assault and damage to property.
Nimbin is known as Australia's marijuana capital. Who would have thought that?
Tailpiece
THREE old guys are out walking.
One says: "Windy, isn't it?"
The second says: "No, it's Thursday!"
The third says: "Me too. Let's go get a beer..."
Last word
I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.
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