The Monigwe: Electricity March

This past Wednesday, the talk of the village was the big march (or protest or strike or demonstration or whatever you want to call it) scheduled for Thursday in my shopping town. My host sister briefly mentioned the possibility of this to me few weeks ago, but it sounded a bit ambitious for the people in my village, so I dismissed it as a non-event. Turns out I was quite wrong and plans were underway to show the elected officials of the area that the people here and in a few other nearby villages are frustrated by and dissatisfied with their lack of access to electricity. I was informed there would be no school on Thursday because taxis would not be transporting teachers from town to the village. The drivers agreed only to provide transport to those wishing to participate in the march. I was also informed that many of the smaller shops in town would be closed for the day to show support for the villages. Lastly, the teachers and principal at my school said that the best thing for me was to stay at home with my family that day – I was not to go to school or go to town. That was slightly disappointing to hear, because this seemed like a pretty big event to witness in person, but in the end, I knew they were right and it was not worth the risk. If something bad happened, I would only have myself to blame.

In any event, early on Thursday morning, taxis drove through my village to pick up the people that planned to participate in the rally. Neither my host mom nor any of my host sisters were interested in attending, but the “other mother” (a.k.a. the second wife of my deceased host father) was eager to play her part in the event when I saw her headed to the road around 6:30am. Transport was provided at no cost, but was strictly limited to those going to the march – there was no sneaking into town for free to buy a few groceries and then returning later in the day. The rest of the day in the village was quiet. We didn’t hear anything until around 5pm when the marchers began to return home. For the most part, I was told that there was a lot of singing and chanting as the group marched through town and ended in front of the municipal building but not much else. One of the teachers at school told me on Friday that the participants also threw a lot of garbage at the municipal building and made quite a mess. Otherwise, I did not get a lot of details.

An old picture of my family's house with their electricity
account number. Today, it is no longer visible.

Regardless, I truthfully and unfortunately, don’t see things changing any time soon. For starters, the municipality is claiming that the 2015 budget includes supplying electricity to villages like mine, but that has been said for two past budgets. In fact, it has been said for the past six years. Sometime in 2008 or 2009, six-digit numbers were painted on the fronts of many of the houses in the village in order to “prepare” for electricity to be installed. At this point, there are almost no houses that have the number any more – nearly everyone has painted over them at some point. It didn’t take long to realize it was more or less useless. The municipality always seems to run out of money before the project ever gets started. Secondly, Eskom, the company that supplies all of the electricity in South Africa, has serious infrastructure problems. When I was in Pretoria last week, they were “load-shedding,” which is basically a rolling blackout to various parts of the city. When I asked one of my South Africans friends how the company could not even provide electricity to the capital full time, he gave what I can only describe as the best answer ever. Twenty years ago, he explained, Eskom only had to provide electricity to 5 million people (think Apartheid). Then one day, they woke up and were expected to provide electricity to 50 million people. Their response was to build exactly zero new power stations. The system has been stumbling along ever since. In the mean time, the people in the village make due with paraffin lamps to light their houses, wood burning stoves for cooking, paraffin stoves to heat items like water or irons, gas cylinders to heat small areas of the house, and small solar panel set-ups to charge cell phones and radios.