I've been threatening to write this post for the last 6 days. Thankfully, today, I have managed to find a plug socket (spouting electricity) and an internet connection. That's a whole lot more than I've had at home for the last while thanks to the infamous sub-station fire 6 days ago. Besides the luxuries of electricity and a hot shower I managed to source today, the death of an elderly couple due to generator fumes inhalation over the weekend has prompted me ever more to write this.

Whenever something fails in our country one can easily anticipate what the general sentiment will be. It really becomes quite tangible. A road gets washed away in a flood ... it's due to poor maintenance. A building collapses ... yep, poor maintenance again. A sub-station bursts into flames plunging 16 neighbourhoods into darkness ... poor maintenance. Despite what the news reports say about the causes we (white) South Africans (especially) are pretty adept at blaming the governments lackluster stance on issues of maintenance. Ever since 1994, that is. Before then (when the whites ran the country) things were well-kept (in very small, rich neighbourhoods).

Having said that, I wonder to what extent we South Africans are effective in turning our bitching into meaningful action? To what extent do we take the energy that is built up by communal bitching and actually direct it towards action?

The blackout that has left me seriously bereft of coffee and hot showers has challenged me in this regard. Until yesterday (day 5 of aforesaid blackout) I was pretty happy to moan about it all and just sit around waiting for our (pretty ineffective) electricity provider to sort out the problem. Why? Well, what use would it have been to spend 15mins on hold while trying to speak to someone in the Provider's call centre who probably has not real influence over the situation? Surely they're working on it as fast as they can? Why waste the energy of (formally) complaining about a problem that had already received much public attention? Right, what difference will another drop in the ocean make?

I wonder?

There are systemic theorists who would suggest that adding another complaint into the system could make all the difference, in a butterfly flaps its wings kind of style. They would suggest that even one lodged formal complaint could create enough energy in the system to move it in another direction i.e. to get the power back quicker than anticipated. How valuable then, if this is true, are our lowly complaints that we so willingly indulge in around the braai?

You see, I'm pretty convinced that very few people have actually done anything about not having power because we throw our hands up in the air and resign ourselves to the notion that we cannot do anything about it.

Au contraire!

Or at least I hope!

So, what did I do today? I added energy into the system by crapping all over some poor Call Centre Agent and by writing this entry. It may not help, but who knows, it might be all that is needed to swing the problem!