Further Ruminations on Living in 3rd World Johannesburg

Our local transformer in Saxonwold

Aweh dearly beloved fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 584 of Re-Modified Lock Down Level 1 and with alcohol.

Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 205 days

This week I am going to return to the topic of living in third world Johannesburg. This is a follow-on from an earlier blog on this topic where I suggested Johannesburg is on the average third-world but is a combination of first-world and fourth-world elements. https://ruminantpinkfriday.com/2021/04/30/ruminations-on-living-in-3rd-world-johannesburg/.

I have lived most of my life in Johannesburg which is one of the most unequal cities on the planet.  I grew up in a house with a 2-acre garden in Bryanston which was on the outskirts of Johannesburg and was semi-rural. Today it is completely built up and is barely recognisable to me.  

As a young postgraduate student with little money, Nerine and I moved to the grittier inner suburbs of Brixton and then Westdene. You can find an excellent description of life on the mean streets of Johannesburg here: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-27-broken-joburgs-voters-get-ready-to-hang-the-council/. The local municipal elections are on 1 November and there is a great deal of anger concerning the current situation.

Shortly after getting married in 1992, we bought a house in more genteel Parkwood, and then finally we bought our current house in Saxonwold in 2009.

Saxonwold is one of the older suburbs in Johannesburg with half-acre stands with many houses having been built between the first and second world wars. It is a forested area with many mature trees planted when the suburb was established. It can definitely be associated with white monopoly capital and white privilege. Today the Saxonwold demographics are more diverse but white monopoly capital is still present. Saxonwold has, however, become world-famous for criminal capital and the proceeds of corruption. The Gupta brothers bought several large houses in Saxonwold from which they ran their criminal enterprise together with the former president of South Africa. The Guptas fled South Africa for Dubai in 2016 with their loot. Both Britain and the USA have imposed sanctions on the brothers in terms of the Magnitsky act.

The wheels of South African criminal justice (such as it is) are moving at their customary glacial pace and the Gupta mansions are empty and are slowly decaying as they are not maintained.

Although Saxonwold is an affluent suburb it cannot totally fully insulate itself from the decay happening in Johannesburg. Water and electricity supply is erratic. Electricity supply is a national disaster and as we speak Eskom (the state-owned electricity supplier) is imposing stage 4 load-shedding on the nation in the week before an election. This involves two two-hour scheduled power cuts per day. Unfortunately, it does not end there. The Johannesburg electricity supply infrastructure is owned by City Power and there are regular unscheduled power cuts caused by decaying and poorly maintained infrastructure in addition to load-shedding.

This brings me to the featured image of the transformer supplying electricity to our street. There are a lot of interesting things to say about this image. For a start, it is Jacaranda season and there are pretty flowers. Then there is some tasteful graffiti on the transformer. For those of you who have lost lovers, there is a healer who can help you. He can also enlarge your manhood. Soon, I will be contacting him about that, and I might let you know how that goes in a future blog. In the background on the street pole, you can see the red Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) election posters. For those readers who are not South African, the EFF is a splinter party from the ruling ANC who feel the ANC is not sufficiently corrupt. They champion expropriation without compensation and comprehensively dealing with white monopoly capital once and for all. Nice chaps, really.

But what about the transformer? On Friday last week in the early afternoon thieves did a sweep through Saxonwold stealing fuses from the unlocked transformers causing a power failure which lasted 48 hours. On Sunday afternoon I saw a City Power truck cruising our street looking for the transformer. I rushed out and took them there. This transformer is supposed to have 9 fuses. Two of the fuses had been stolen and five of them had previously been bridged with wire. The main breaker switch for the transformer is broken so it can’t be turned off for maintenance work. The technician, very gingerly, positioned the new fuses with a pair of plyers. Then, using a wooden pickaxe handle, she pushed the fuses into place amidst a very impressive shower of sparks.

It also turns out that the oil level in the transformer is very low. The oil in the transformer acts as a coolant and insufficient oil can cause it to overheat leading to catastrophic failure which can involve an explosion or fire. Anybody who happens to be walking on the pavement close to the transformer at the time could face injury or death.

Lest you think this is all doom and gloom I have not taken all of this lying down and I have been pestering City Power about this. Those of you who know me well know that I can be very annoying. To their credit, they sent an independent contractor to meet me, and we did a tour of the Saxonwold transformers which all need work. They have promised to fix them all next week. I live in hope.

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions and please keep them coming.

Regards

Bruce