Monday 27 April 2015

Freedom Day Reflections


Where were you on this day 21 years ago? Can you remember? Most South Africans can as this is Freedom Day where there were long queues of people waiting to cast their first democratic votes. I remember exactly where I was, in Durban.

Reflecting back on the 21 years, what has changed? Oh there goes the power yet again. For 21 years Eskom has been struggling with aging power stations and have nothing to show for the 21 years. They even had to take out two moth balled power stations dating back to the 1960s just to try keep up with their bad planning and little maintenance. Oh well the money had to go to pay the corporate bonuses.


On this Freedom Day, I come across the coal fired Pretoria West Power station sitting idle doing nothing, it was a perfect photograph for my Freedom Day. Reflecting on the 21 years we have come since the first democratic elections, I am excited and yet why am I so sad at the same time? We have done many things right along this journey but at the same time things have fallen apart due to corruption and greed of a few. The poor grow poorer and the rich richer in this new South Africa of ours.

Okay I am getting off the topic of today, doing some research, I found that there are talks to get this over 50 year old power station back up and running again especially for the peak periods when load shedding has become a norm. So as it may look tranquil now, this old lady may come to our rescue and rescue we need indeed.

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