“[President] Cyril Ramaphosa went to the queen’s funeral and now [transport minister Fikile] Mbalula went to Qatar and we are sitting with no electricity and communities are mourning the Pongola tragedy.”
This is a comment captured on the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) happiness index after the announcement of stage 6 load-shedding.
“The happiness of South Africans dropped below the average of 6.85 (for 2022) to 6.44 on September 18 2022,” said Prof Talita Greyling, associate professor at the School of Economics and founder of the index.
“The negative emotions, as seen from the tweets, reflect disappointment, anger and distrust of government officials, and fear of further increases in unemployment and poverty,” said Greyling.
Load-shedding is an emotional pressure cooker: UJ’s happiness index
“[President] Cyril Ramaphosa went to the queen’s funeral and now [transport minister Fikile] Mbalula went to Qatar and we are sitting with no electricity and communities are mourning the Pongola tragedy.”
This is a comment captured on the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) happiness index after the announcement of stage 6 load-shedding.
“The happiness of South Africans dropped below the average of 6.85 (for 2022) to 6.44 on September 18 2022,” said Prof Talita Greyling, associate professor at the School of Economics and founder of the index.
“The negative emotions, as seen from the tweets, reflect disappointment, anger and distrust of government officials, and fear of further increases in unemployment and poverty,” said Greyling.
The report records comments made by South Africans, including:
The energy crisis has sparked debate around the competence of the Eskom board and calls for its executives to be removed. The EFF was among those making the demands, saying the party had warned about the management of the state-owned power utility.
Ramaphosa, who was in the UK attending Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, decided to skip a planned address to the UN General Assembly and head home instead after holding a virtual briefing with cabinet ministers and officials. It is the second time he’s had to curtail an overseas visit to respond to the energy crisis. He cut short a visit to Egypt in late 2019 five months after he was elected president.
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