Racists, Eskom and why I don't want to put the boot in

The wave of racist comments around Eskom and its — and by extension the government’s — incapacity to manage things has abated a little in my life.

I liked the timing of one person’s comment — with the news of the blackouts, and Kenya’s troubles, someone turned to me and exclaimed about Africa’s inability to manage itself. I said that no one said that about Asians, because of Burma and Sri Lanka. At that point the news switched to coverage of a 10-day power outage in some parts of China, blamed on some particularly vicious weather. I have to say I was pleased, about which I am rather sorry now. I’m sure that was bad for my karma.

But that sort of timing is rare. Mostly people get to say horrible things about Africans, and then there is some dire report, Africans being shot, or starved, or shot and starved, and people get to look at each other, and nod, yes, yes, we are right, these Africans can’t organise a piss-up in the proverbial. And the Eskom crisis has brought them all out of the woodwork, all right. The most annoying are saintly about it, as in, shame, these poor blacks, we must be tolerant of their failures.

How do you deal with this wave of racist vomit? It is absolutely no use in my experience to point to any individual high fliers — the average person will happily discount the individual success as a lawyer or astrophysicist as exceptional, and of no application to society at large. George Bush can fail, and be stupid with it, but no one says, “Well, those whites, you know.” (Not in my circles anyway — they say, “Well, those Americans, you know.”)

Pointing out that Buyelwa Sonjica was just repeating the old English saying “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” is also not useful — just not the right thing to say, even if it is a bit more resonant than the “get up clever” version her speechwriter came up with. (Who are these people? Are they paid?)

There is also, annoyingly, probably some truth to the fact that clumsy and badly considered affirmative action may have led to a skills erosion in Eskom — not that I know anything about affirmative action in Eskom, but I have heard enough really daft interpretations of affirmative action to be suspicious. My favourite was a senior employee in home affairs, since departed, who suggested that affirmative action should be applied to immigrants. What?!

I could, you may say, just change the circles in which I move. I could, I guess. But I am probably not going to do that — I am most likely just going to continue to point out haplessly that government officials are also white, and some Indian, and everyone gets it wrong sometimes. The minute that criticism of Eskom loses its racist overtones, I’ll be in there, boots and all. I’m as mad as anyone at the lack of planning. But until then, count me out.