A 'European Spring' to break the gloom?

There's probably nothing quite like being deprived of electricity for indeterminate periods to make one feel a little edgy.

There's probably nothing quite like being deprived of electricity for indeterminate periods to make one feel a little edgy.

And edgy is not how you want to be feeling when you are already having to cope with the tensions that come with being a slow-growing economy under huge pressure to transform. It affects one's perceptions.

At the best of times we tend to have a rather exaggerated sense of our performance in global rankings. Not only do we occasionally believe we have the best rugby, cricket or soccer teams in the world, we generally believe we have the most embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt politicians in the world; indeed it often seems we believe we're the only country on the planet to have incompetent and corrupt politicians.

We cling to this belief in our world-class ineptitude and dishonesty almost with a sense of pride, and trawl through every new survey from Transparency International or the World Economic Forum in search of supporting evidence.

The electricity crisis means these are not the best of times. It has encouraged the belief that we are in a desperate state.

However, the comforting - albeit sad - reality is that pretty much the entire world, even where there is electricity, is in a mess. And much of it can be attributed to embarrassingly unscrupulous politicians. It seems that citizens of democracies across the globe, and not just in South Africa, have been happy to elect these dishonourable people.

But things may be about to change - or at least in a number of European countries. In Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Ireland there are signs that angry, desperate citizens are prepared to dump tried and tested political parties in favour of entities that have no experience of running any level of government - and have fewer ties with business.

Within the next few days we will know whether the new far-left opposition party Syriza has won today's snap general election in Greece or whether voters were cowed by grim warnings from the European Union (EU) establishment. Syriza's success would point to dramatic changes for this hugely dysfunctional state.

In Spain, the youthful leader of a political party that was founded less than a year ago could be the country's next prime minister. Pablo Iglesias, who came up through the ranks of the anti-globalisation movement, wants no less than "to change the rules of the political game", according to Spanish media. Left and right are no longer useful political terms: "The fundamental divide now is between oligarchy and democracy, between a social majority and a privileged minority."

In Ireland, there is little sign that the strongest economic growth in the EU has calmed the seething anger of citizens who have had to endure a prolonged combination of tax hikes and cutbacks in government spending. The proposed introduction of water charges appears to have woken up the previously somnolent Irish, who seemed incapable of protesting against the European Central Bank's running of the country following the 2008 financial crash.

Now, however, the Irish seem in no doubt that the members of the established political parties are corrupt or incompetent - sometimes both. On the basis of recent opinion polls the main political parties, which have dominated government since 1922, would be swept away by independent, inexperienced MPs.

Before the recent Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris, the National Front was the most popular political party in France. And this had much to do with the fact it has no experience of running a government at local or national level, so is deemed less guilty of corruption and cronyism.

Talking of corruption and cronyism inevitably brings us around to the Davos bash, where leading political figures met with leading business figures this week to discuss the implications of growing inequality and the accompanying widespread political disaffection.

If the electricity stays on long enough, we may soon be able to watch ) a violent "European Spring" unfold on our TV screens.