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Have we had a discussion on South Africa yet?
Recently, Andre de Ruyter, the now-ex CEO of the state owned power provider ESKOM, did an interview that basically said the corruption and everything was so bad that he and ESKOM cannot do their jobs properly. He himself was a target of assassination (cyanide pill in his coffee or something?), and after the interview has been removed from his post (he put in his resignation before the interview). He has since left the country.
There are many reports that the grid can totally collapse soon, despite the "load shedding" that they have been doing. Apparently this may lead to civil war?
Unemployment is apparently 35%, clean water access and supply is apparently unstable. Crime is apparently extremely high. If you go on /r/southAfrica, there are frequent discussions of home invasion and other crimes (70 carjackings a day, 2500 home invasions a day...). One post I saw last week was a question asking "Dogs been poisoned, both dead. Typically how many days before robbery hit?"
See this recent thread for more issues: https://twitter.com/k9_reaper/status/1630436052723720193
Some blame this all on the ruling ANC party, on their policies like BBBEE (from a few years ago: https://www.revolver.news/2021/07/south-africa-riots-looting-critical-race-theory/).
In general, SA's situation is not looking good...
i know little on the condition of south africa. some users who responded to this comment describe further degradation or collapse of the grid as less impactful than i would think, certainly than it would be if the grid collapsed in north america. could anyone shed light on this?
is south africa's grid already so disfunctional total failure wouldn't be much different? are fears of grid collapse overblown? i read in that thread mentions of "loadshedding" where people have power off for chunks of the day. has this always been a thing in south africa?
i'm an often swift critic of the more banal sorts of "everything sucks and it's getting worse" claims but a country restricting power usage for several hours each day is surely declining, and a country with a collapsed grid is surely a failed state.
what might i be improperly assuming or overlooking? poor infrastructure and no infrastructure seem a chasm apart.
We have had consistent load shedding since about November 2022, and its quite clear it has escalated like this due to politics rather than degradation (which has been slow but steady but not as sudden as this). Up until now, you will have two or three weeks of it followed by a two or three month reprieve. It is really having an impact now, and full grid collapse will definitely be too much for us to handle. I and ny family have still been okay, we use gas for cooking and have batteries for routers etc and usually its just a 2 hour tech free gap. When you start losing 8 hours plus a day, it gets difficult. But all our business and lifestyle relies on the fact that it will be coming back on. If i cant work at home, i go to a restaurant or the office, which mostly come with diesel generators in the basement. If one area is offline, you can always move to another nearby, and everything still functions. We hold it together. But if that power never comes back on, it all goes
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