[imagesource: Madam & Eve]

Tomorrow marks a full month of uninterrupted load shedding, which will be the first time in history that we ‘achieve’ the landmark.

You’re welcome to celebrate by lighting a candle – it’s what Eskom would want.

By now, you’ve been sent the memes and heard the jokes about stage eight, which is when an Eskom official comes to your house and blows said candle out.

Zapiro has stuck the boot in, EskomSePush is now one of South Africa’s most important apps, and we’re becoming accustomed to living with hours a day sans electricity.

For peace of mind, don’t ask one of your Zimbabwean friends how things started veering off-path in their neck of the woods.

Madam & Eve, the brainchild of Stephen Francis and Rico, has taken aim for its latest comedy strip on The Daily Maverick. For those in need of new material, we give you ‘Eskomedy’:

What did people use before candles and torches? Electricity.

Ouch.

As we head for the sanctity of the weekend, what’s the latest thing standing in our power supply’s way? According to Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, the power utility is being hamstrung by unscrupulous coal suppliers.

Below via Fin24:

“What we have found is that, particularly now with the arbitrage created between export coal and the coal that Eskom buys, that there is a three times multiple that you can get by effectively stealing Eskom’s coal, replacing it with discard coal … and our coal then gets exported to Europe,” Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said at the Joburg Indaba on Thursday.

The discard coal is of low quality, measured by a Calorific Value (CV) of between seven and eight, compared to Eskom required coal qualities of between 15 and 18 CV.

“So you can imagine that it doesn’t burn so well,” De Ruyter said.

There’s also that classic ‘it rained and the coal was wet’ excuse.

Fun drinking game – pick your favourite Eskom excuse and take a shot if we hear it over the weekend.

If we are going to go without power we may as well find a way to enjoy it.

[sources:dailymav&fin24]