Some Dark Humour

South Africa is in the grip of nationwide electricity blackouts. So how are people coping? With humour, of course.

 *[Image source](https://whisnews21.com/2014/11/25/understanding-sas-eskom-load-shedding-decisions/)*

South Africa's monopoly electricity supply utility, Eskom, has seemingly run out of capacity and is imposing what it calls “load shedding”. Err.. blackouts. The causes of this include:

• Grossly incompetent managers
• Looting of the utility on a massive scale
• Deciding to erect two enormous coal-fired power stations itself, with such enormous cost overruns they are now the most expensive such plants in the world
• The two new power station don't work.

This load shedding is done in stages. Stage 1 is where they shed 1000 MW. Stage 2 is 2000 MW and so on to Stage 4 which, you guessed it is the Armageddon-like 4000 MW.

The jokes started when Stage 4 was reached, and people wondered what would happen at Stage 5. But no sooner had the unthinkable been joked about, when Eskom played a trick on the public.

 *https://twitter.com/nexus_gene/status/1107997100015603712*

Yes, they started implementing Stages 5 & 6.

 *https://twitter.com/Saagir12/status/1108000855792455680*

Another variant of this was:

 *https://twitter.com/kitty46kat/status/1108048775245955073*

But how would you light them anyway?

 *https://twitter.com/thedarrenmaule/status/1108071457484140545*

Still, people still take naughty selfies:

 *https://twitter.com/keenanwradio/status/1108032294198104064*

. . . and can still go out and have fun no matter what Stage we get to:

 *https://twitter.com/keenanwradio/status/1108032294198104064*

But that might not work:

 *https://twitter.com/Siya020402/status/1108057630084423680*

And who would you have fun with?

 *https://twitter.com/TheOpinion8d1/status/1108836740532523009*

Then Eskom really gets down to business:

 *https://twitter.com/LiciousRyan1/status/1108040044412063745*

Things turn uglier:

 *https://twitter.com/Molebo_8/status/1107025905434664960*

. . . and uglier:

 *https://twitter.com/robkowa/status/1108641585959522304*

It gets so bad, that eventually:

 *https://twitter.com/NicolaDoubleU/status/1108068158764658690*

But, in the end, resistance is futile:

 *https://twitter.com/Omphile9/status/1108734027748556800*

. . . and all hope is lost.

 *https://twitter.com/LolasTheme1/status/1108015118229495809*

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Also posted on Weku, @tim-beck, 2019-03-22