I have, me thinks, a better chance of falling pregnant, than any of this happening. Procure skilled experts se gat, and let’s see how quick the R100 million finds a new home curtesy of all the CancER feeders and theft…
Government were not able to change anything for the better, ever, as far as Eskom is concerned. Just look at the Extra R70 Million just for the ministers… Even before the R100 million was obtained, most of it was already spent!
Groetnis
Gets MUCH worse …
I will say this again. People do like to say that the previous Eskom CEO failed. And in some ways he did, but… if the biggest problem with Eskom is the ANC, and this guy gets rid of the ANC… then he succeeded. Perhaps not quite in the way we expected, but in every way that matters.
Something interesting I picked up last week. The powers that be is making an effort to find out who killed Kiernan Jarryd Forbes. I mean, they are struggling, but the big man himself is on the case.
Do we hear the same sort of zeal for finding out who poisoned the CEO of one of the most important entities in this country? I mean, the guy survived (thankfully!), but it is still attempted murder. It still means the next CEO is unlikely do be able to do his job properly either…
In many ways, this thing fails with the guy wearing the Fedora…
Well, voters have a short memory. They’ll move us down to stage 1/2 for the month (if even) preceding the election and all will be well. How to move us to stage 1/2? Maybe they force some big industrial consumers to shut down, delay granting them a licence, whatever.
I am cynical, yes, but in the past we’ve seen how little it takes to make the average voter forget about past failures.
In Namibia, we used to say that all you have to do to get the vote, is show up with food the day before. I mean, that isn’t even a dig at people’s intelligence. The poorest of the poor literally vote according to where the next meal comes from. It is downright evil, but that is how it goes.
There is a counter to this, and that is that it tends to work (only?) in rural areas. In the cities, people have more resources, people have more access to information. And in recent times, where everyone has a cell phone, and airtime/data is practically a kind of currency, it is no longer sufficient to just show up with food and a promise. That’s progress.
Unfortunately, information channels can also be used for disinformation.
I often wonder about that there statement… Not so sure we have a democracy here, Cleptocrasy or Socialist/Communist maybe rather yes? What happens during election counting, who knows… We cannot even deliver school books nor electricity. See there is the connection to this here subject matter 
IdeologieseGroetnis
I’ll take ours over the American system any day though. We’re miles away from anything socialist/communist (at least, compared to actual socialist countries like Cuba, the former Soviet union, North Korea, even modern day China). Our system of proportional representation is, at least on paper, a brilliant system.
That is why representatives of every part is there, and must be there. Sure, I have no doubt, no doubt at all that there is some corruption, some extra ballot boxes added here and there, but I seriously doubt that the system has enough room to steal an election. What I can believe, is that a 49%/51% split could be stolen, but I doubt a “landslide” is possible either way.
Lately I have been watching quite a bit of WW2 material again. It is then when you realise, that after WW1, nobody had answers for the (very real!) problems Germans faced. Only one party seemed to have the answers, and that is the scary part: Some of the problems were real problems. They used that to gain traction, to gain members, and eventually to gain power, using legal means (the Weimar constitution, and an election).
Also, it has to be noted that the US isn’t really a democracy. They are a constitutional Republic
I have ebbing faith in The Average Wouter.
We certainly are not a democracy. In such a system, there are efficient delivery of services. It’s not a welfare state. There is Law and Order. Crimes are mostly under control. Education, health services and other public Services are useful and usable. There is a benefit to paying Tax, or at least a perceived benefit.
Certainly a functioning democracy is not on top of, or really bottom of, the murder stats, the electricity stats, rape stats, hijackings, infrastructure maintenance etc etc. I am sure the points were made. All the above are hallmarks of not Democracy, look around the World. All places where we would not care to live, even if we live in one of the least good places when looked at in comparison.
PissedoffGroetnis
I fully disagree with your dislikes of the failures, but “democracy” merely means that the people choose the government. It is distinct from other kinds of governments, like a Dictatorship, or a Monarchy, where the people don’t choose the government. It is also quite possible (maybe even likely) that law and order will reign in a dictatorship or a monarchy…
You welcome to dislike em as much as ya wants, facts remain, for democracy’s these things are contained. Fact, this government is involved in it. Also, democracy in name maybe, none of the ruling elite can be described as anything but mobsters and gangsters with a deep socialist ideology. They are mostly responsible for where we are, not exclusively, but mostly.
Someone once said, do not fear the ruling elite, fear those that keep them rulers…
NogsteedspissedoffGroetnis
Elected representatives are accountable to the people, and the government’s authority is derived from the consent of the governed.
In our case, Zero accountability to anyone, even none to the Law. Concent of the people, yea right.
IdeologieseGroetnis
Sadly no,just because you are not getting the services doesn’t mean its not a democracy.
If you pitch up on voting day, and your single checkmark has exactly the same weight as the 1000’s of people behind you, regardless of any other factor like class or race, you are living in a democracy.
Of course there is the argument voters get the government they deserve, so the average voter does bear the consequences of his actions like you said in the lack of services, but they were still allowed to pick the people that screwed them over
Nope. Sadly not. A democracy is, in the words of Churchill, the worst system of government, except for all those others.
The theory is that in a democracy, the “people” can remove the corrupt leaders, and that ought to lead to certain checks and balances… which they don’t always. Again, I do not disagree that things are in a bad way (I accidentally typed disagree earlier, I meant agree), but I think it would be a very big mistake to assert that we are therefore not living in a democracy. We are very much living with the tyranny of democracy, where 50%+1 gives you all sorts of powers that the other 50%-1 doesn’t like.
You guys, you guys, you are now talking theory here. I am not. Define a functional democracy, not the theory of what it is supposed to deliver. If it quacks…
EendGroetnis
If this one over here is that, man oh man I do not want to live in a banana republic 
Oh wait…
PiesangGroetnis
You know, we are arguing about what words mean. We should leave that for the dictionary. Here we can just agree that things are not as we would like them. That’s okay
N goeie begryper, and all that…
WoodlooseGroetnis
Almost half as many days and hours as the full year 2022, we not even 1/4 of the way yet…
BlackoutGroetnis
Again, it looks like they just took the number of days and multiplied by 24. That makes 2015 look considerably worse than it was, given that it was stage 1 and 2 only, and probably closer to 50 hours for the average person.
Conversely, 2023 was entirely stage 3 and up (5 slots every 2 days), or at least 350 hours so far this year. That’s 7 times worse, but the chart makes it look like only about twice…
