There are many sensible reasons why President Cyril Ramaphosa decided to cancel his visit to Davos on Sunday and stay at home to tackle the electricity crisis like a garden gnome tackling a runaway train that is on fire.
It’s possible, for example, that he was about to leave for Switzerland when his pilot told him that his plane’s battery had been redeployed to power a small catering firm outside Waterkloof and there’s a nine-year waiting list for a new one, or 37 years if you go through the SA Post Office.
It’s possible he was putting the last of his special fleece undies into his suitcase when he lost his balance, tumbled in, accidentally closed the lid on himself, and, because nobody noticed he was gone, was only discovered by a valet five hours after he should have left for the airport.
It’s possible that he was heading out of the door when Gwede Mantashe appeared in front of him (perhaps because he’d said “Candyman” three times into a mirror) and showed him some impatient WhatsApps from the captain of a Karpower ship holding its position just beyond the horizon, explaining to the president that he needed to make a decision because there were only so many eggplant emojis Mantashe could send the Turks before they started suspecting they were getting catfished.
It’s possible he was simply trying to avoid those haunted Davos corridors, where you can’t turn around and get back in the lift because you’ve already been spotted by the gang of G7 leaders lolling against the Vermeer and passing round a bottleneck, and now you have to walk past them and endure their cruel, cruel jokes: “Hey Cyril, got a light? Oh wait, that’s only in four hours.” “Hey Cyril, me and the missus want to go off-grid for a bit, get back to basics. How’s the industrial and commercial hub of South Africa this time of year?” “Fellas, fellas, don’t be like that! Cyril, don’t listen to those guys. Oh, and good luck with the election next year. One man, one volt, eh comrade?”
It’s even possible that he stayed in South Africa because he realised that Andre de Ruyter is leaving Eskom in March and it’s time to start searching the bus-stops and public toilets for a replacement.
The anger that so many are feeling, however, does seem new, perhaps because the crisis is unprecedented since 1994.
Why there? Well, Ramaphosa knows that Eskom is unfixable as long as the ANC and its parallel economy of extraction are in power. He knows the extent to which the utility is infested with mafias, and the extent to which those mafias are untouchable. He knows that 27 black executives turned down the job before De Ruyter said yes in 2019. He knows that, given recent allegations about poison, that list might now number in the hundreds. Which means Ramaphosa knows, as we all do, that the person who takes over from De Ruyter will be, by definition, incompetent, unhinged or both.
In other words, Ramaphosa might as well start trying to track down the sort of robust optimist who makes a living selling cures for bad luck, low salaries, small penises and massive, cascading omnishambles wrought by a decade of ANC neglect followed by another of ANC looting.
The most likely reason for the president cancelling his trip, however, is probably that he was warned against going by his Pleb Whisperer, an interpreter who speaks Non-Billionaire and who translates it into Billionaire so the president can gain a rudimentary understanding of what’s happening out beyond the gatehouse.
This official, I’m guessing, told Ramaphosa that the people are angry, to which the president, being an empathetic man, no doubt replied: “Oh dear! Has their Ankole bull also got a twisted testicle?”
Of course, a more cynical leader might have replied that the people are always angry, and that the only thing that’s different this time is that it’s the middle class that’s angry, which means the anger is being amplified on screens and in newspapers rather than being ignored as it impotently burns tyres in forgotten townships or along deserted stretches of highway.
Certainly, in terms of their relationship with the state and the services it is supposed to provide, many middle class people are now starting to come up against that immovable barrier that is so familiar to poor people in this country: the belligerent stupidity of the ANC cadre; the crude, resentful Jobsworth slumped behind the scratched Plexiglas partition, telling us that the system is down, the forms have run out, there’s no pen, they’re closed for the day and, above all, that there is no recourse.
The anger that so many are feeling, however, does seem new, perhaps because the crisis is unprecedented since 1994.
Stage 4 load-shedding, we are starting to understand, was extremely inconvenient and potentially lethal to vulnerable small businesses; but stage 6 is a country killer. At continuous stage 6, water eventually stops being pumped and sewage treated. Farmers — the most stoic of people in this country and the least prone to hyperbole — are starting to talk of failed harvests.
Politically it made sense for Ramaphosa to skip Davos, but practically it makes no difference whatsoever: Eskom is unfixable no matter where Ramaphosa poses for the cameras or sits down to play dollies with his task team; and as long as he and his gorging, sordid party squat across it, it will remain unfixable.
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