Personal Notes 

A personal note - Powerless. Or are we?

The current lack of current caused by the "Powers that be" being unable to supply power is an almost constant topic of conversation. There are constant complaints, totally justified, of load shedding and the chaos that this causes. Tragically I fear that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg and the true ramifications of this situation will show us what chaos really is.

But what I want to talk about is not what happened, or what should have happened, or even who is to blame. Sure this keeps us busy and allows us to be righteously indignant. And we can get ourselves so heated that we become a power station ourselves, but we can do nothing about it. Even if we changed the government we couldn't solve the problem so I suggest that we leave it alone for now.

No. What I want to talk about is how we deal with this situation in a responsible manner and how we ensure that our behaviour does not add to the problem but rather helps to minimise it.

The first thing that we can do is make an effort to use less electricity. Now you can't SAVE electricity as you can't store it but you can use LESS electricity. By using less we reduce the strain placed on the overloaded and under maintained system. The benefit of using less electricity is that you SAVE money, and that's worthwhile and we keep the system going for another day and that is essential.

However there is something that we can do and that will make a big difference and that is to put pressure on the municipalities to cut back on their consumption. I have always been amazed at how much electricity the municipalities waste. Here in Nigel where I live we had to nag them to switch off the flood light that lit up the swimming pool every night especially wasteful since the swimming pool is EMPTY and can't be used.

The first thing that all municipalities should do is take out 66% of all street lights. 1 light in every 3 is more than enough light for us to see where we are going and when you consider the millions of street lights this would be a considerable saving. (in Nigel we have just had a massive project to light up the road between Nigel and Springs with lamp posts about every 30 or 40 meters apart over a distance of about 12 km. However we are not wasting too much electricity because as fast as the municipality put in cables the cable thieves steal them)

So you do your bit and write to, or phone, your municipality and tell them to do their bit.

To live your best life be true to the YOU, that you want to be.

Live up to the reputation that you want to have.