Man, that is an old acronym. I feel like maybe we need to explain it, for our English readers: It is short for “Hier kom groot moeilikheid”, here comes big trouble. The fact that the last word doesn’t start with a K… well that’s the joke. Happy hunting!
There is another joke about this, about two parents driving in the car with their kids and noticing a road sign was demolished in a car accident. The wife then said to her husband: Daar is die padteken nou ook in sy mmmpeetjie in. Because, the kids were in the back, you see.
Something HAS to give … WILL give … IS going to give.
The “cleanup” of the criminal element, from the top to the bottom?
National Blackout?
Maybe Big Business steps in and Eskom splits?
… or nothing happens, slowly we sink.
Still seriously ticked off, like with State Capture, “everyone” in business, Banks, Reserve Bank, auditing firms, SAP … and SARS “knew” of the conniving but said/did nothing till they had to scramble when it started coming out, then giving tokens of “admissions of guilt”.
Now with Eskom, De Ruyter’s admissions … ALL political parties are “complicit”. Don’t for one second believe like the DA et al did not know of this, were not told of this.
And how are the stolen monies taken care of… the banks “know” nothing? SARS, where are you in all this? Reserve Bank with monies leaving SA’s shores? De Ruyter touched on that too … how it is done right here in SA.
How does De Ruyter know all this, and no one else?
There was really only one option on the table, all this time, and we must not forget that hindsight is 20/20. The only option was a tax revolt. And if you listen to Dawie Roodt, a tax revolt would pretty much kill the “state”, by which I don’t mean the ANC, I mean it breaks the entire agreement that allows South Africa to operate as a country. It was an option not to use lightly.
Really? The FF+ was complicit? I don’t vote for them, but I think that’s a little sweeping. Yes, they knew about it. No, they didn’t benefit. Complicit is a little OTT
You think criminals pay tax?
In that interview (really guys, watch the whole thing), De Ruyter mentioned one example, a company who leases expensive exotic cars to their “owners”. If you want to go for a drive in “your car”, they bring the car to you, you can drive it down the potholed streets of town, and afterwards they take it back again. Doing it that way, means the car doesn’t show up as being owned by you, and you don’t trigger a lifestyle audit.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Exactly! If De Ruyter knew this, how on this earth did no one else knew? SARS can hound anyone and anything.
As De Ruyter also said, people living above their means proudly showing it off on Social Media profiles, yet “nothing gets done”. It is 'open secrets".
To those with the money, and ideology, it means everything. The age old adage holds true: If we would get this, logically we would use that post haste to fix them problems… Therefore they would do the same, shame they suffering so much, we must help.
As we know by now, logic is playing no part here, only ideology and criminality.
I am glad, but really really sad at the same time, you are realising this. I have been exposed to the inside of that place and how they operate, over a very long time. It’s a culture.
Aaah the old Edmund Burke quote (though, it turns out he didn’t say it, it was probably paraphrased from something John Stuart Mill said). I have some issues with this. Silence is not the only thing necessary, and it is also not the silver bullet that stops evil in its tracks. Silence may be essential if you want to stay alive.
It should also be pointed out that there was hardly silence from political parties. The DA is often criticised for “only” talking about the corruption in the ANC… which means they are talking about it a lot.
Sadly, I don’t know if that would be admissible in court. People are also very good at faking prosperity on social media. That’s basically the number one reason it makes us miserable… everyone else is having a better life than we do.
I am not saying the politicians are faking it on social media. Not at all. I am saying they will claim that they did, if you try to use it as evidence. You’re going to need something harder.
The police is of course also in on the conspiracy (yup… I said it). It came out in Jacques Pauw’s book The president’s keepers, and Ramaphosa has not had the time (and perhaps the will, or even power) to dismantle it. Honestly, read that book, see how things like gangsterism on the Cape flats are impacted and dramatically worsened when a gun-runner has the inside track with a high level politician, forcing the police to look the other way (and those willing to speak to be “promoted” to a position where they can’t).
Speaking of gangsterism: It makes a good analogy. What we have here is high level gangsterism. Take that same argument, that argument that people “ought to have done something” or “ought to have said something” and apply it to scaled down version of the same problem, a neighbourhood harassed by gangs, and see how that plays it…
We can go backward and forwards … my point is … we must stop looking with 20/20 hindsight like in “O my … so we speculated all this time, and it was not only true, it was actually worse? Why did we not see that!?”
What Sarel says, listen to the man …
Sarel gives an actual insight, as does De Ruyter.
It all is, State Capture too, an “open secret”!?
When a gang takes over a suburb, some will step up and take charge … some will sit and do nothing … some will hide … some will sit there and mansplain why the gang is there and why not to “shoot them”.
We need to stop and decide … like someone close to me now … when is the time to learn to use the word “No”, and not “maybe”, “but”.
… without grabbing pitch forks burning the whole place down …
I intend to pull the same lever I’ve been pulling every 5 years, in the hope that this time, enough people do the same and the evildoers are ousted. That, after all, is the advertised advantage of a democracy.
Historically, the only alternative is revolution.
Beyond that, I can only say that you’re welcome to enter politics, but I am staying out.
The other day, I B&M about the hours, then it dawned upon me … if it says LS level X, it means technically 2.5h slots off, not 2h as we actually get.
So, again, the other day:
00:00-02:30 - Stage 6 - 2.5h
06:00-10:30 - Stage 5 - 4.5h
16:00-18:30 - Stage 6 - 2.5h
22:00-02:30 - Stage 6 - 4.5h Technically and officially that is 14h scheduled. … not 12h we actually see/get.
Cleverly, 2.5h fell “outside” the official 24h period, so technically it was 11.5h in the 24h period officially scheduled.
30min short of … I quote Mashele from Dec 2022:
… ingeniously disguised with a Level 5 shoved in and 2.5h “outside” the 24h period … If we stick to the official definition of LS levels and durations of each interruption, 2.5h.
Actually, all it means is X * 1000MW is being shed somehow. And there is an additional amount of B & M’ing going on about that, because some people feel that load curtailment (when Eskom call on large consumers, where this is in the contract, to cut power) should be included. If load curtailment should be included, then we have indeed been to stage 8 already (just shy of 7100 MW short).
It all depends on the definition.
But I digress. It means X * 1000MW has to be cut, and that means either a phone call is made, asking to drop more, or a predetermined amount is shed. How the city or town ends up doing this is their own business.
Cape Town does it in slightly under 2-hour windows, with an extra 30 minutes to allow for interleaving.
Some places used 4-hour slots, but they stopped doing it because it is a really long time.
There are also places like Mafube where the slots are shorter.
I’m stuck on the hours off … as you say, it all depends on the definition, the interpretation … and how the Gov/Eskom wants to implement the definition/interpretation at “that point in time”.
As was reported, technically we were on Level 7 … but we saw mostly 6’s and some 5’s thrown in.
Anyhow, I’m just watching ESP for that level 7 to become “official” … but as I read here and there, Gov wants to “redo” the LS levels or something.
I’m practicing “interpreting” the LS levels and hours. It is a non-issue for me, today we even used the dryer during LS … but this coming winter, oh boy it could get quite interesting with the weather added here in Cpt.
When you deliberately choose to be obtuse and actually cannot admit to the actual MW the is not available, you know the end is creeping up on ya.
Just another symptom of the ills. Technically they are flat out lying, misrepresenting them facts. If you reduce the load by 7100MW, that is by definition not what they say it is.
All coming together in one week (?) … Strike 1: We have Eskom CEO and L6 drama. Strike 2: The greylisting of SA for anti-money laundering. Strike 3: And now this … Koebegs refueling in the future, exports/imports to and from the USA, Europe?
“Feels like” the international markets/Gov’s are starting to “react” with this infantile Marxist Gov.
I also wonder if by any chance the greylisting has even the faintest link to do with Eskoms “R1bil per month” theft. That is an “open secret” for a while now, as in “the ANC Gov cannot seem to “follow the money”, so here, let’s help you a wee bit.”?
Although criminals “don’t pay SARS tax”, when SARS do find them via Lifestyle Audits or other means, it goes like this: How can you drive this car, live in this area/house, have this lifestyle, and not be paying any taxes … come and explain that to us."
That’s my main gripe when it comes to definitions. Pick whichever one works, and then stick to it! I remember 20 years ago, in a philosophy, vaguely a lesson on the colour grite (which was once the same as green, but is now the same as white) and how that confuses things. That’s the nonsense you cannot deal with when having any sort of debate or technical discussion.
As I see it, the load shedding stage was always defined with load curtailment excluded. Maybe a time has come where we can no longer do that, and we either have to lump them together, or at the very least report both of them (which indeed paints a very bad picture), but I sort-of insist that if we stick to the original definition if we want to do any sort of comparison. And in that case… no… we are in stage 6, not in stage 8. That’s not because I’m trying to diminish the magnitude of what is going on, just because unequal weights are detestable (that’s somewhere from Proverbs… ).
