Well, can it get any worse than that? I'm willing to bet it can. I'm writing this because I've never firsthand experienced a total power outage. Load shedding, sure, but not this. The way it was handled was utterly and completely, disgustingly, horrendously incompetent. And sure, I'm not a qualified electrician, perhaps I shouldn't complain.

The greater Oudtshoorn area covers roughly between 60,000(main) and 130,000 people. So I don't think this is a small issue.

So, apparently at around 2 to 3am on Saturday morning, a pylon caught fire and collapsed on the powerline between Oudtshoorn and Dysselsdorp. There was no storm or lightning around that time, or any disruptive weather, and I guess you could chalk it up to voltage issues. The municipality (and Eskom) stated that this happened due to structural failure. There's not really a better explanation given.

And while no one can prove "sabotage," the whole thing is vague, irregular, and weird. When that one pylon fell, it apparently took two others with it. The Eskom team had to dig and plant new holes, move the pylons, and I assume adjust and modify various technicalities (I'm not knowledgeable here). One early excuse I heard was that they'd apparently lost the technology to maintain the goddamn things.

Since then, they've failed their own deadline to fix the issue at least six times: Sunday twice, monday thrice, Tuesday, roughly once. They also basically just copy-pasted statements and didn't collaborate with the public on providing actual updates.

The weirdest part was that a private company, (contractors on site) Volmoed Quarries & Van der Berg Vervoer, was the one posting actual images from the site. Eskom, the municipality, and the news outlets followed suit after.

The municipality also didn't seem to give a shit about the general populace — no health awareness updates until the community pushed them to say something. Refusal to address the public at times. Plenty of people's food seemed to have gone rotten over the course of two days, and many people ended up cooking and throwing away thousands of rand worth of groceries.

Some of the information, i said above might have some inconsistencies but it's the general image of what happened here.

I won't say it was hell for me, because my family is semi-prepared, and while we haven't made the effort to invest in backup power, it's kind of a priority now, I guess. Too little too late. I have zero faith in democracy, or whatever this cadre corruption system is that we're in — just thought I'd share a little awareness.

Ladismith apparently had a period(2 Years ago, I think) where they didn't have power for two weeks, could happen to you guys too, just letting you know.

What are the implications of losing atleast a billion people overnight.

Think about it logically. Pressing red ensures you preserve your own skin, but not you're definitive future in this reality. Our society is held together by people maintaining engineering, plumbing, sewage management, construction, specialized controlers. You take away those bricks and our society collapses overnight.

You have to think about collective humanity and our current advancement. What do we stand to lose in the arts, engineering and logistical department. There are people right now working overnight to ensure, you have lights that keep working, that your grocery store is filled up next week, that you don't die because you lacked anti-biotics.

Air controllers, power plants, coast guard, military power blocs, engineers, scientists, do I have to yamper on?

And that's without the emotional aspects. Think about pets, children, elderly, mentally deficit individuals, the disabled, the irrational, and even the malicious, (that would thrive in this lesser world.)