Load shedding
is one of many words that I had never heard before I came to South Africa. But
after living here for almost ten months now I had more than enough chances to
experience it myself!
As
electricity in South Africa is always scarce, from time to time it may happen
that it doesn’t suffice to meet the country’s demand. In these cases the
electricity supply in certain changing areas is interrupted to avoid a national
black-out that would have much worse consequences. And that’s called load
shedding. Unfortunately load shedding often occurs in the evening hours when it’s
not only dark and cold, but also when people want to cook. But as South
Africans are very creative there are already lots of load shedding recipes
available on the internet!
There also is
scheduled load shedding that’s announced in advance. In summer people said there
would be a lot of load shedding now to save electricity for the winter, but
actually I feel like the load shedding got more and more since I came here and
gets even worse now that it is winter. For me that’s not even such a big
problem, because as I live at work and I’ve got the big luxury that we have an
emergency generator. But normal households don’t and even many facilities where
you would expect it don’t. So it regularly happens to me that I arrive at the
gym motivated to hit the treadmill and suddenly it just stops moving under my
feet. But that’s a comparably small problem. I have much more pity with all
those people that are sitting in their cold and dark houses without any
electricity and even the batteries of cell phones and laptops are slowly dying –
and that sometimes several days a week!
This Monday was a school holiday and I could finally fulfil the promise that I made to the St Mary's children to come and bake with them. During the normal school weeks it is always difficult because there wouldn't be enough time between coming from school, eating and doing homework. So when I arrived on Monday morning everybody was happy about the extra program because normally the children are often bored and don't know what to do on free days. They were even happier when I showed them what I had brought for decorating our cupcakes and I think that actually was the part that they enjoyed most of our baking session. In the end our results looked quite good even though I had to stop my assistants from burrying the cupcakes under a thick layer of colourful decor.
I also had my personal photographers that captured every step in pictures - sometimes maybe a bit blurred, but it's the memory that counts!
South
Africa is situated in the southern subtropical zone, but due to varying
elevation and the influence of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean it has a wide
variety of climates. The Eastern coast for example is especially in winter the
warmest part of the country thanks to the warm Agulhas Current. The climate at
the western coast and also many parts of the country’s interior is much colder.
Johannesburg on the other hand is situated at an altitude of more than 1700 metres
above sea level. I need to drive only an hour to Pretoria which is less elevated and where the
temperatures can be about 5 or 6 degrees Celsius warmer.
So far here in Joburg
the temperatures were quite enjoyable – even in summer. Most of the time they
were between 25 and 30 degrees, on some rare days also up to 35 degrees. But
because of the high elevation it’s very easy to get sunburned – especially for
me with my rather sensitive skin – so that I sometimes only had to stay in the
sun for 15 minutes until I started to turn red…In late spring and summer it was
also raining almost every day. But not that long lasting gentle drizzling rain
that I was used to from Germany. Instead it normally only rained in the
evenings and most of the time only for less than an hour but so heavy that the
streets seemed to turn into dirty rivers. Now that it is winter we haven’t had
any rain for at least two months. That’s why it is very dry and bushfires are
developing everywhere. Besides the winter temperatures for the moment are very
cold! With up to 20 degrees during the day of course it is still quite warm
compared to German winter, but at night the temperatures are almost dropping to
freezing point. As our building is very badly isolated, my windows don’t shut
completely and I only have a tiny little heater in my room I feel like living
very close to the South Pole!
But what I really love about the South African
weather is that no matter what season it is the sun is actually always shining.
So even if it is cold for the moment you just need to go out into the sun to heat
up - so it’s not comparable to the dark and uncomfortable German winter days.
As I promised today I am starting with my "South African lessons" beginning with quite a serious topic.
Xenophobia
In the last
months South Africa was making lots of headlines in the international press because
of the increasing xenophobic violence against foreign nationals which already
caused deaths and many more injured since the beginning of this year. Also in
the previous years there have been xenophobic riots again and again that seem
not to fit the picture of the united South African “rainbow nation”.
This year
it all started in Soweto, Johannesburg’s most popular township very close to my
place, when a Somali shop owner shot a 14-year-old boy trying to rob his shop.
This incident caused a series of attacks and looting of Somali, Pakistani,
Ethiopian and Bangladeshi owned shops all over Soweto. It was even reported
that the police played an active role in the attacks and helped the attackers
raiding the shops.
In March
the violence spread to Limpopo, a province in the north of Johannesburg, where
many more shops were looted and their owners violently pushed out of their
villages. When on the 21st of March Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini
publicly said that foreigner should go back to their home countries instead of
enjoying the wealth that should have been for local people many foreign
nationals became scared because of his big influence under the Zulus.
In April
the attacks also spread to KwaZulu-Natal, the easternmost province, and caused
the first couple of deaths when people were trapped in their burning shops. In
the following days clashes between looters, foreigners and the police erupted,
mostly around Durban. Some country’s authorities already started repatriating
their nationals and four refugee camps have been set up but luckily it looks
like the situation calmed down a little bit in the last few weeks.
Even though
I was not far away from the riots in Soweto I luckily didn’t see anything
myself. But many friends told me that they saw people chasing foreigners or
people looting shops. Furthermore the consequences can’t be overlooked as many
shops only consist of burned ruins and other owners don’t dare to open their
shops anymore. Also when I came back from my last holidays in April I was first
a little bit chocked. We hadn’t heard about any news during our trip and then
on our last evening before returning to Johannesburg we got a warning message
from our AFS coordinator saying that a train full with Zulus was on their way
from Durban to Johannesburg to chase foreigners. Without knowing what had been
going on in the last weeks we were quite concerned because we didn’t know if we
as foreigners could also be concerned – especially because our coordinator was
talking about possible evacuation plans if the situation should become too bad.
But back in Joburg we didn’t get into any trouble because the violence never
was against white foreigners.
Last week I
also met a woman that was in a shop during a looting and her face was
completely disfigured by burn injuries. She will be marked by that event for
the rest of her life and I think that there is no chance for her to be ever
again able to walk around without everyone looking at her severe burns. Now I
just hope that the riots finally came to an end, that there will be no more
innocent people that will have to suffer like that and all the shop owners
won’t have to live in anxiety anymore!
