Eskom officials are saboteurs

Predictably, Eskom has mostly blamed everybody else for its own titanic stuff-ups.

CEO Tshediso Matona chided the media for using the term "blackout" because, he said, that would mean all lights in South Africa were off at the same time.

Is living one notch above the palaeolithic age the new gold standard?

We hardly need a lesson in semantics from the company that came up with "load-shedding" (which implies a surplus of power).

It is estimated that Eskom's malfunctions have, since 2008, cost the economy R300-billion. That is not a crisis, that is a "challenge".

"This is a company of competent people," said Matona. Here, the word "competent" is being used so liberally that it probably includes amoebas.

Matona accused the South Africans he is supposed to serve of "a psychosis of complete darkness".

"When your power is being cut, you think all of the country is in darkness," he said.

In essence, he imposes on us a fictional delusion to bolster his own delusion that he is doing his job.

We do not think the entire country has been simultaneously plunged into darkness, but we do know that every electrified centimetre of South Africa , barring, I imagine, the hallowed ground that is Nkandla, has at some point recently been plunged into darkness for extensive and repeated periods .

We also know that most of February and March will feature rolling blackouts (according to a precise formula whereby x is multiplied by y, with x being "resources" and y being "idiots in charge").

If someone bombed a coal depot or power station, they would be charged with terrorism. Eskom's twits get a bonus for doing the same thing on a grander scale.

I urge business to launch a joint legal action against Eskom officials in their private capacity, charging them with sabotage.

Opposition parties could call on the Constitutional Court to limit the powers of government in terms of cadre deployment. The constitution was written in the hopes of thwarting the rise of a new tyranny.

Only when Matona and his cohorts stand to lose their jobs will they finally see not a "challenge" but a "crisis".