Stage-Two Cyril Ramaphosa vs John Steenhuisen the Tourguide

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Wednesday.

I’m strangely relieved — almost happy — to hear that two years of regularised stage two power cuts appear to lie ahead.

The idea that there is, finally, a plan to try and keep the lights on in the long term, even if it means less electricity daily, in a controlled way, rather than the uncertainty and chaos of the past year — make that 15 years — for the foreseeable future, is somehow comforting.

That and the presidential nod for rooftop solar and a sudden general realisation on the part of the governing party that failing to fix the power mess will cost them what’s left of their electoral majority in 2024, present some kind of light — however dim and flickering — at the end of the tunnel.

It’s going to be a while before we see solar panels on the roof of the Union Buildings — or Luthuli House — and a weekend of stage four blackouts is waiting — but at least President Cyril Ramaphosa and his party appear to have got beyond the hand-wringing phase and are actually going to try to solve the problem.

Finally.

I decided to pass on the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) walking tour of the Johannesburg city centre.

That’s what the DA’s march on the governing party’s headquarters to protest against loadshedding turned out to be, given that nobody got anywhere near Luthuli House or handed anything to anyone.

My own career as a marcher ended at about the same time as apartheid rule.

The defiance campaign in 1989 was a thing of real beauty — and power — and quite something to have participated in, so there was no way I was going to trail around Jozi with the brethren in blue half a lifetime later.

Roaming the streets alone, unfettered and unsupervised, is more my thing these days — but full marks to the leader of the official opposition for giving some of our fellow South Africans their first taste of downtown Johannesburg.

Granted, there were a lot more members of the constabulary on duty on Wednesday than usual, but it was actually rather brave of John Steenhuisen to take the DA members from Durban and elsewhere to see a part of the big city they wouldn’t normally have experienced.

John the Tourguide.

The human wall thrown up around Luthuli House by the ANC Youth League in response to the DA march was no surprise.

Neither was the closing of ranks around Ramaphosa — and Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe — by the ANC that came as the external pressure on both party leaders increased since the weekend.

This time last week the comrades were criticising Cyril and gunning for Gwede over Eskom. Today they’re backing both to the hilt, two years of stage two blackouts or not, thanks, in part, to John Goes to Joburg.

There’s no better way to ensure that Mantashe doesn’t go than to hit the streets in a blue T-shirt with a placard demanding that he should; no better way to unite the comrades than to present an external threat to their leaders.

It’s as simple as A.N.C.

Even the comrades in the kingdom — no fans of Ramaphosa going into the ANC conference in December — appear to have left Nasrec things at Nasrec and are now leading the Ramaphosa defence committee around Eskom.

ANC KwaZulu-Natal secretary Bheki Mtolo made it clear this week that they had bought into the two years of stage two plan presented to their provincial executive committee on Monday — and to the idea of Ramaphosa’s second term.

Mtolo made it clear the ANC in the province is willing to accept planned, institutionalised power cuts for 24 months to allow Eskom to repair and refurbish its fleet — and for Mantashe to bring other suppliers into the system — in return for power (electrical and otherwise) in the longer term.

Rather fewer, but better, electrically as well as politically.

Mtolo will have further alienated the wenzenists in the kingdom with his description of Ramaphosa as an honest, honourable leader, whose biggest mistake has been to speak the truth to a nation accustomed to being led by liars.

Rough, but not entirely untrue, at least with regard to our electricity situation.

Perhaps I’m being naive, too trusting, in Stage-Two Cyril and the rest of his team.

This is, after all, the party who invented load-shedding; whose fairest and finest looted the Covid-19 emergency funds while the rest of us were locked down and trying to stay afloat — and alive — so we are extremely far from out of the woods yet.

Only time — and the comrades — will tell.