Imilender's tour in Sub-saharan africa

When an European is unemployed, he'll mainly just takes it easy. When an African is unemployed, he will go out early in the morning, try to find some economical oportunity to earn some money and then come back home with that money. That results in the fact that you will see several different kind of entrepreneurs everywhere. What however is stricking is that there are only very few beggars. People truly try to make their living by selling something.

I took the picture yesterday. It was a guy he was sewing trousers just outside our office. Unfortunately the picture is taken from quite a far a way, but he is using an old Singer that he actually operates by winding a nob with his right hand. He's just sitting there sewing business mens' (and womens') clothes day in and out. Didn't ask the prices but I doubt if he chargest more than R10 (€1) for shortening pants.

All the parking places also include car wash facilities. For example there is one in the garage of our office. They will charge me R25 (€2.5) for washing my car from the outside, and this is handwash of course. If I ask them to also clean the car from inside, that R10 extra. The price diffence is just amazing when you think what you would pay for the same service in Finland.

Other entrepreneurs include quys selling goods at intersections. They truly to have a market sence. Close to a clothing store, they are selling cloth hangers, during a sunny day they would be selling beach gear, on a rainy day they start selling umbrellas. Toys are of course a very common item as well. When the traffic lights are out, one of these quys might even start directing traffic.

Also close to hardware stores there are always loads of unemployed people with tools like paint brushes in hand. So if you need a tiler or painter, you can just pick a quy from the intersection. Only problem to this thriving entrepreneurship is the crime. I personally at least do not dare to buy much of the items from the quys at intersections as some of them might want to steal you once you open your window. Also I would not dare to take a handyman from the intersection to my home, as you never know if you can trust him. Never the less, they must be able to sell they services to some people, otherwise I doubt there would be so many of them still around.

My appologies for being silent for a while. Have been a bit busy.

Electricity situation at the moment is better. Industries have been able to reduce their consumption somewhat, and Eskom has managed to get some power stations back online. The interesting discussion here is on how to manage the Fifa 2010 world cup, as the power production situation is not expected to improve considerably. The organizers are saying that they have agreed with Eskom that power will be quaranteed to the stadiums and to the regions where the stadiums are, but will the rest of the country be without power at that time?

Security in South Africa is a normal discussion topic and it is the question most people tend to ask as first when you mention you're living in South Africa. Well it is true that there are number of security precautions that have been taken in this country and that one needs to consider. First precaution is your car. Most people have their car's fitted with so called "smash-and-crab" coating for all windows. This coating will protect the windows from breaking if somebody hits them. Also you should never have anything valuable visible in your car and of course one should have the doors locked.

Second precaution is your house. One should either life in a secure estate in which there is 24hours security patrolling the perimeter. If you do not live in such a area, then you will have normally electric fence around your own house, alarms, metal bars in windows and doors etc. Same kind of precautions are around all shopping centers and you'll notice that when you leave many of the shopping centers there is a boom and security guard checking that you have keys in the lock (i.e. that it is you're car). I have just often wondered what they could do should you try to steal a car. Most shopping centers will also have car watchers, i.e. men and women who have been authorized by the shopping center to guard the cars in the parking lot. They will also help customers to load cars, take shopping trolleys back into the mall and guide in getting the car out of the parking spot. They work solely on tips that the drivers give to them, and they actually even have to pay little to the shopping center to get the permission to watch the cars.

Also one needs to take special caution in financial matters. The banks have established several security measures, such as sending random verification numbers to customers cellphones as sms before the customer can do any transactions and calling in to verify that the checks are truly written by the individual. However the villains have also found ways to get through those security measures. What they are doing is that they will intercept the fixed line calls and do sim swaps to access the victims mobile phone. Then the RVN or verification call will end up with the villain and not the victim, and they will get access to the victims bank account. therefore the recomendation is that if you're phone goes dead, call back first and then the operator, not the other way around.

But in the end, once you're aware of certain measures that you need to take, living here is very nice and the probability that you'll end up being a victim of crime is small.

The SA power crisis continues. Last thursday was the worst day in the history. Eskom was forced to shed of 4000 MW of power as 25% of the national production capacity was out of use due to ruotine maintenance, faults at power stations and wet coal. We were for 6 hours straight without power and got to test out our inverter. It worked very nicely and we had electricity in our lights, we could use microwave to heat up food and we even had our Internet connection up. It was quite a relieve to have some power even during the power cut.

After that we have had no powercuts as the gold and platinum mines were closed as Eskom could not quarantee their power supply. The result of the power cuts were that platinum and gold prices went to all time high. Only now on wednesday the mines are starting operations again as Eskom is promising that they could have power again. Of course the general public is fearing if it will lead to more blackouts in residential areas.

The blackouts has also lead to new innovative ways to make money. Some people are waiting for the blackouts and during one go and steal the cables. They then go and sell the cable for scrap metal. Generator and UPS sales have scyrocketed and electricians are all busy installing them. Some smaller gated communities and single standing houses are fearing criminals as they loose their security systems during the blackout. Fortunately we are living in Dainfern where they do have a contingency plan for blackouts. Our security has backup generators and our security can operate as well during a blackout as when Eskom is providing the power.

The big question on everyones lips at the moment is, how will this country cope with the load shedding. We had couple of quite days with no load shedding on Sunday and Monday, but after that they are back. Load shedding is a constant topic in the media at the moment. Last week the human rights council complaint that the poorer former black communities were more influenced by the cuts than the richer former white communities. It seems that as an outcome Escom has been scheduling more cuts to also our area. Yesterday we had cuts from 10-12, from 16-18 and even a short one at eight. This morning started with another cut at 6.30.

It seems that nobody is unaffected by the cuts. The rail company had couple of carriages burned down by angry commuters who got fed up when the train stopped for 2 hours due to load shedding. In Capetown hundreds of tourists were stuck hanging midair in cable cars as that area was under loadshedding. Even hospitals are having to postpone some non critical procedures as they cannot know if they operating rooms will loose power due to load shedding. Fortunately they do have generators so they can still manage the critical patients. The funny thing is that even the biggest mall (at least according to my guide book) in souther hemisphere, the Sandton City mall is affected by daily power cuts. The mall does have generator power to light up some lamps and operatate elavators, but all the shops are forced to close as there is not enough power for them. I personally ended up trying to sort out my banking there three times last week and each time it was affected by a power cut. It is weird walking in a large shopping mall that is almost dark. The hairdressers are still trying to accomodate their customers by pushing them into the mall's main passage ways and using the emergency lighting. :->

Traffic is getting really terrible as there are tens of major intersection without power. The traffic still flows, but it is a lot slower. Fortunately the Johannesburg metropolitan police promised to deploy police men to guide the traffic in the worst intersections.

The whole problem seems to be mainly caused by couple of factors. The first factor is that Eskom asked for funding to build new power stations over 10 years ago, but then the goverment had declined their pleas. They were hoping to have independent sector to build the stations. However the electricity price was (and still is) so low that there was no business case for independent sector. Eskom was just few years back given finance to build stations, but it takes several years to build a station. So there is no surplus at the moment. The second reason why this problem hit the country right now is that Eskom is doing routine maintenance during summer when the consumption has generally been the lowest. However as the economy has been booming for several years, nowdays there is a lot more airconditioning load than there used to be.

Well I got my inverter installed yesterday, so no we have light and power even during a blackout!

It's interesting how dependand we are on electricity. Everything nowdays runs on electricity from computers to cleaning utilities. And if power is out, the whole economy pretty much stops working. South Africa is currently faced with a situation that the demand for electicity is higher than the production capacity and therefore the national electicity supplier, Eskom, has had to resort to load shedding. The current power shortage is 2000MW.

Load shedding basically means that they intentionally cut of certain parts of the power distribution network to reduce comsumption. These black outs are scheduled and informed on the eskom website. The scheduled blackouts are always for two hours and the schedule depends on the level of shortfall that the network is experiencing.

These blackouts affect day-to-day life in various means. Larger offices are often fitted with own generators or batteries & inverters to power up the computers and internet connections during a blackout. However not all. For example we were in a bank on monday trying to setup internet access for our accounts when a powercut hit, and the entire bank was closed, as was the entire mall in which the bank was in. The traffic lights will of course also switch themselves off during the blackout. However this country is so used to blackout that traffic flows suprisingly well through the intersection anyhow. They even have a rule on how to behave in an intersection if the traffic lights are off. That intersection is treated as a fourway stop and the one who stopped first, will go first. Basically meaning that there will always get one car from each side street out at turn.

Well now we need to decide how we'll handle our own blackouts. Shall we install an inverter or a generator...