https://hotair.com/tree-huggin...-hurt-locker-n529346

Car crashes, opportunistic criminals, rotting food, decomposing bodies, bankrupt businesses, and water shortages. Welcome to life under South Africa’s power blackouts.

Last week the grim extent of the outages was laid bare when South Africans were advised to bury dead loved ones within four days.

In a public statement, the South African Funeral Practitioners Association warned that bodies in mortuaries were rapidly decomposing because of the unrelenting electricity outages, putting huge pressure on funeral parlors struggling to process corpses.

The culprit in all this is the country’s nationalized energy company known as ESKOM

Shortages on the electricity system unbalance the network, and Eskom has stated that controlled outages are necessary to ensure reserve margins are maintained, and the system remains stable.

While the country has been experiencing on-off power outages for years, since September 2022 scheduled blackouts have become routine, affecting every part of South African society.

South Africa has now gone over 100 days with outages every day

The escalation of power outages is also deeply worrying for South Africa’s food security, driving up prices, and placing an even greater strain on stretched household budgets.

With modern farming practices ever more reliant on electricity for crop irrigation, processing, and storage, loadshedding is having a huge impact on agricultural output.

Gys Olivier, a farmer from Hertzogville in Free State province, in east-central South Africa, says he and other farmers in the area have been forced to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of seed potatoes due to disruptions to the ‘cold chain’ – (the process of keeping produce refrigerated throughout the supply chain.)

There is also less demand from growers due to water shortages, with pump stations reliant on electricity to operate.

Poultry is dying by the thousands because ventilation fans are cut off, ice cream and dairy products are either spoiling, or the business owners are being bankrupted by having to buy generators and the hugely expensive diesel to run them when the power cuts out.

Under the ruling African National Congress (ANC), in charge since 1994, Eskom has become synonymous with corruption, crime, and mismanagement.

The government has failed to build new power stations to keep up with increased demand, and warnings from energy experts on looming supply shortages across the past two decades have gone ignored.

South Africa is notorious for high crime rates, and loadshedding is making it worse as home security systems fail when the power goes out, giving criminals a field day inside unsecured properties.
Policing also becomes harder, with officers unable to reach crime scenes fast enough due to congestion when traffic lights are off.

Tumelo Mogodiseng, General Secretary of the South African Policing Union (SAPU), describes the load-shedding as “a pandemic.”

He says his members’ lives are now more at risk, with officers unable to see potentially dangerous situations in the darkness, and police stations, many of which don’t have backup power systems, at risk of attack from criminals during blackouts.

more at link

scary thought - the Biden administration is pushing us long term towards the same fate

It's NOT Easy being 'Green'...

All of these problems could be solved if they switched to battery operated everything.

Coming soon to a country near you.

While apartheid was a reprehensible morally wrong policy, the alternative the corrupt ANC chose once they got in power, Marxism, is equally wrong and the devastation they are wreaking on that beautiful country is heartbreaking.

These power outages are just a downstream result of a failed government and the now rampant corruption and crime that is robbing SA of its wealth and civility.

Unlike many of the US's homeless that are addicted to alcohol or drugs, mentally ill, and choose to be homeless, there are communities of mostly white, but many black Afrikaners as well that are homeless and hungry, living in shacks by roads and on landowner's private party that show them sympathy, because they truly can't find jobs in SA's devolving economy.

It's bad enough to watch a third world country languish in miserable conditions but, in some ways, it's even tougher to watch a first world country devolve into a third world one.

South Africa is one of the countries that my heart breaks for.

This is what happens when savages try to run society. It’ll be just another sin to lay at the white devils feet for the marxist governments continuing inability to figure out how things work.

I was in South Africa and Mozambique back around 2008. There were random power outages back then too. Those countries are 3rd world, have been for a long time. What did the world expect? Don't know about SA, but in Moz, if you had what is equivalent to a 3rd grade education (8th grade over there) you were good to go. Fact is, you can't put a bunch of uneducated people into power and expect great things to happen. You can't take from those who have and give it to someone who has had nothing and expect them not to blow it in a short time. Unfortunately, SA will crumble and 3-4 generations down the road will eventually some back, VERY closely or just be taken over by the Chinese and exploited for all their raw resources.

The country side in these areas is absolutely gorgeous along with actually being able to see the Milky Way before dawn with the naked eye due. I was glad to be able to see it when I did.

Sounds like Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

This is corruption, thievery and Marxism pure and simple, nothing to do with “green”.

I read that it’s a regular occurrence for power lines and transformers etc to be installed in the morning and by the night, that’s all ripped out and stolen.

I'd wager money that the people at the top of the hierarchy aren't experiencing power outages. Cuz they're, y'know, important.

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
It's NOT Easy being 'Green'...

Has nothing to do with green in SA.
Massive corruption and criminal behavior is all it takes.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
It's NOT Easy being 'Green'...

Has nothing to do with green in SA.
Massive corruption and criminal behavior is all it takes.

It sure sounds like it, I don't believe we can blame this one on green.

"They’ve spent billions on coal-fired plants that don’t run properly, the older plants haven’t been maintained, engineers who could fix things have been leaving the country in droves....."

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2...is-spreading-n539215

The African power grid collapse is spreading

the power grid problems are spreading in one of the more underreported stories of the year. Zimbabwe and Nigeria are now also experiencing near-total collapses of their power grids. People who still have jobs are having to work at night because that’s the only time there is stable electricity. Scheduled blackouts frequently last up to ten or even twelve hours per day, and both nations’ economies are tanking as a result

The electricity shortages that plague many of Africa’s 54 countries are a serious drain on the continent’s economic growth

So what do Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and South Africa all have in common? A couple of years ago, Zimbabwe agreed to a UN plan to mandate more renewable energy and move away from coal and natural gas. At roughly the same time, Nigeria signed on to the UN Clean Energy Demand Initiative and John Kerry showed up in person when Nigeria’s president signed the mandate. And as we’ve discussed here before, South Africa started its “transition” to renewable energy years ago, dumping $8.5 billion into the plan in a move the New York Times described as a “Breakthrough for the World.” A few years later, people are sitting in the dark with no heat over wide regions of each country

Do you know who isn’t worried about having enough power? China. They’ve been issuing construction permits for an average of two new coal plants per week for the past couple of years. China’s carbon output is more than double that of the United States

China can apparently do what they like because they’re a “developing nation.”

The Chinese are laughing their butts off at us right now. We’re tanking our own power grid and our economy to placate the climate gods. I somehow doubt Beijing is too concerned about potentially getting into a hot war with a country that can’t keep its lights on and gives away all of its missiles to Ukraine

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
It's NOT Easy being 'Green'...

Has nothing to do with green in SA.
Massive corruption and criminal behavior is all it takes.

After Hurricane Maria in '17 knocked-out large swaths of Puerto Rico's electrical infrastructure, it laid bare the corruption and lack of investment by island's energy producer PREPA. PREPA is a government authorized monopoly and the executives used their positions to leverage parts of government and other services outside of their principal job. South Africa being a separate country, takes such corruption to another level.

While green-energy movement has up-ended a variety of nation's power infrastructure its a new-comer in the game of influence; the leveraging of the energy sector for personal and nefarious goals has been going on for centuries.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
Sounds like Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

Inadvertently left out hard-left Portland.

I read into this a month or so ago. A large factor mentioned was hiring people not qualified for the job, as those that were qualified left or were ushered out.

They may of had outages before, but they have been ramping up, not getting better.

I think there’s a lesson for us in this, no guarantee that we will heed the indicators.

Soooooo many things I could say.

quote:

Originally posted by ridewv:

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
It's NOT Easy being 'Green'...

Has nothing to do with green in SA.
Massive corruption and criminal behavior is all it takes.

It sure sounds like it, I don't believe we can blame this one on green.

"They’ve spent billions on coal-fired plants that don’t run properly, the older plants haven’t been maintained, engineers who could fix things have been leaving the country in droves....."

'Nothing' to do with Green...Well not exactly! Massive corruption and criminal behavior, yes, but there is this to consider...

quote:

So what do Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and South Africa all have in common? A couple of years ago, Zimbabwe agreed to a UN plan to mandate more renewable energy and move away from coal and natural gas. At roughly the same time, Nigeria signed on to the UN Clean Energy Demand Initiative and John Kerry showed up in person when Nigeria’s president signed the mandate. And as we’ve discussed here before, South Africa started its “transition” to renewable energy years ago, dumping $8.5 billion into the plan in a move the New York Times described as a “Breakthrough for the World.” A few years later, people are sitting in the dark with no heat over wide regions of each country. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, right?

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2...is-spreading-n539215

That massive corruption and criminal behavior has also resulted in pouring Billions into a 'Green Energy' initiative, at the expense of maintaining/operating the existing electrical grid. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that corrupt/criminal cabal at the top and in charge will benefit financially at obscene levels as a result!

Water seeks its own level.

Got to talking to a guy outside Auto Zone a while back. He said he was from Zimbabwe. I responded Rhodesia. He smiled and said yes but most people don’t know about that. He escaped to South Africa. Then that started going to shit so he came here. He said we are headed the same direction but he’s not leaving because he would rather stay and fight and plus there is no where to go.
I remember after I left UF years ago the students were protesting at the administration building. The wanted it renamed Winnie Mandela hall. Friggin morons. I wonder if they would have wanted an eternal flame statue out front that looked like a burning tire on someone’s shoulders.
Also talked to a supervisor on the crew laying fiber in my hood. He is from Romania but came here to escape communism/socialism. He sees the same crap getting hold here but said he’s not leaving, there’s no where to go.