First, it happens slowly. Then it happens fast.
The melting pot of races, cultures and socio-economic conditions simmers and gurgles at an ever-increasing temperature until the lights go out – then it reaches boiling point.
And while the Institute of Race Relations has done a good job of showing that race is not the issue in South Africa, it is an issue which adds spice to the smouldering cauldron of a failed state. Ignore it at your peril, especially when a disparate community is put under the extreme pressure of a three-week power outage, as has happened in my street.
I live in a suburb that was built for middle-class families in the 50s but is now a popular area for a new type of home-owner who transforms the old family homes into room-for-rent properties often housing 20 units and 8 geysers on one erf. The population density and demographics now more closely resemble that of a township. It is a natural, necessary and predictable migration of people.
For most, it is a big improvement in lifestyle, but the infrastructure simply cannot cope with all the additional requirements. Circuit breakers trip, cables burn out and human fuses blow. Almost overnight my community has become a raw and live wire, arcing with tension and the threat of physical harm. There is no insulation as the municipality has abandoned us. They literally left the transformer box open and drove off.
We are on our own. A group of culturally and socio-economically diverse people with little disposable income have to solve the problem themselves.
‘It has come to my attention that some clever blacks are working with the whites to point fingers at certain houses in the street. This will not be tolerated.’ This was the message from the most powerful bloc on the street. Some people had pointed out that the council said the electricity problems were caused by the multiple and visible illegal connections from those ‘certain’ houses which, among others, were overloading our system and that the solution was simply to disconnect those houses.
To add fuel to the fire, the specific houses appear to be largely owned and occupied by residents with an ancestry tracing to the north of our borders. The response was hostile and unapologetic. Their position was that the term ‘illegal’ was a bad way to look at it and it was anyway a lesser transgression compared to how white ancestors stole an entire country.
From zero to Jan van Riebeeck …
From zero to Jan van Riebeeck in two exchanges. The live wire shoots out another spark. Everyone treads more carefully.
‘We are all black now,’ I said in a conciliatory tone. ‘Some of us are just light black.’ A few people laughed. I wasn’t lynched. It has been among the most profound and difficult conversations I have had with my neighbours and I wish we’d started talking like this sooner, but we didn’t. If only we had met on the street corner by the transformer face to face more often, but we hadn’t. We don’t know how to talk to each other. We don’t know how to relate.
Therefore, the fifty shades of black in my street see the problem and the solution completely differently:
The Light blacks tend to see it in terms of rules and regulations; illegal connections must be disconnected and illegal occupants evicted, finish and klaar.
The Southerns (residents with lineage from within our borders) said we must ‘work together as one’ and that concepts like ‘overcrowding’ were unproductive and had racial undercurrents to them. ‘We all know white people have only one child and black people five, let’s not go there again,’ was one response. I agreed. Their solution was to protest. Only two people showed up.
The Northerns (a group with origins north of our borders, including Somalian, Nigerian, Zimbabwean and Zambian) agreed with the concept of group participation, but felt it should take the form of giving money to them so their ’guys’ could fix the electricity problem themselves. The government won’t help us, so why not source the materials ‘privately’ and pay technicians who will moonlight to do it? Makes perfect sense.
People gave and soon we had electricity – except for the houses that did not pay. Nobody saw that part coming. Just like that, my street has been hijacked via electricity supply. It is like that scene in the movie with Tom Hanks where the pirate takes over the ship and simply announces: ‘I am the captain now.’ It happened overnight and without nary a whimper.
New kind of levy
I am no stranger to shakedowns, but I usually call it ‘tax’. This is a new kind of levy for me. Mind you, the Lights have a bigger problem with this than the Southerns and Northerns, for whom this type of private enterprise is more in line with ‘kasi-style economics. Dialogue about the subtle differences between ubuntu, ‘working together’ and ‘extortion’ goes nowhere. When faced with immediate needs, people struggle to think long-term. Nobody turned out to be Clever after all.
Winter is coming.
Soon, all those geysers and heaters will go on. We have already had one fire in the street with people burning wood for warmth. They almost set their whole house on fire. The two phases we currently have running won’t hold. There will be another blackout. It will be chaos. The emotional pressure will cause an explosion. People are starting to use threatening language. I understand some people spoke to the media, hoping to shame the councillor into action. Others call security companies when they see the ladders going up and down the poles, connecting and disconnecting people according to the unspoken rules of the new Captain (without whom we would probably not have any power at all).
We are dry tinder waiting for a spark.
I suspect we are the canary in the coalmine of a wider pattern that will repeat itself soon in an area near you. When doing your doomsday prepping, put at the top of your list how you are going to deal with your neighbours. How are you going to present yourself in a way that is meaningful to the rest of the group? Your biggest barrier will be the vastly different frames of reference, and while it does not have anything to do with skin colour, there are subtle associations with perceptions of generations of financial inequality, and understandably so.
Don’t let it surprise you or shock you. This is completely reasonable behaviour. Think about it. Be prepared.
You can alleviate your electricity problems with a generator or solar, but you will have a more complicated human challenge to negotiate.
Riveting
I happen to be the longest-standing resident of the street and this whole event has been fascinating to me. I have watched the quiet neighbourhood with the large yards and fruit trees morph into a lively cosmopolitan environment, filled with music, low-cost housing and people looking for a better life. While the urban passage of people is not as spectacular as the annual migration of the wildebeest across the Serengeti, it is as riveting if you are paying attention. It would have been much more enchanting if I was not living here and so terrified.
There is no inequality in my street anymore. No one has special privileges. We are all in this together. We are all fucked – together. Simunye. We are finally ‘one’.
There is always a bright side.
[Image: Lars Nissen from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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