We South Africans are a resilient bunch.

You roll out the load shedding, and we’ll charge our devices in readiness. You turn off the power, and we’ll find something in the back of the fridge to eat.

The lights are out, so you can’t see the ‘best by’ date.

There’s only so much kak we’re willing to take, though, and the Eskom situation has officially gone off the deep end.

You want to really get the blood pressure pumping? According to a News24 report, which has been covered on BusinessTech, the national police’s crime intelligence unit is investigating whether the latest round of load shedding is due to sabotage caused by Eskom employees.

Well, ain’t that something:

A number of senior sources in crime intelligence reportedly told News24 that the project is focusing on whether the outages are deliberate and the work of aggrieved workers, and whether the issue could worsen around the national elections as workers try to leverage these positions.

A number of highly placed government sources also indicated that there seems to be a concerted effort by some inside Eskom to resist efforts to restructure and reform the embattled power utility.

This resistance is coming from the remnants of former president Jacob Zuma’s state capture network who have centralised control, the sources said.

I think we’re at the point where we start calling it the ANC’s state capture network, because there were many grubby fingers in that pie, and they’re not being held accountable.

According to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), who released a statement last week, it is worried about the potential unbundling of the power utility into three separate entities:

“The shop stewards are very angry towards the attitude so far demonstrated by the leadership in government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), who are talking in tongues about the future of workers at Eskom,”it said.

“They are unable to explain properly what the unbundling means to thousands of poor workers.”

NUM added that it plans to march to Luthuli House on March 30 and demand the resignation of all Eskom board members.

As long as they vent that anger at the polls on May 8, too.

Happy Fake Friday, with tomorrow being a public holiday and all.

[source:businesstech]