take stock | Ramokgopa’s promises end with a steady ship with an iceberg

opinion

Ministers are immune to falling loads, so we’re not in the same boat

If there’s one thing we learned from the Titanic disaster, it’s that it’s always wrong to tempt fate by taking excessive pride in your abilities.

It is a pity that the movers and shakers in government didn’t get the memo. Much to their chagrin, one hopes.

While there is still much debate over whether Captain Edward John Smith actually uttered the infamous words that “even God” could sink the Titanic in 1912, the doomed ocean liner’s fate served as a monumental token against the arrogance that has blinded it ever since. now.

Electricity Minister Kgocincho Ramukjuba certainly knew he was asking for trouble when he said in a press conference that improvements in load distribution between phases 1 and 3 were not “due to an act of God,” but due to government and business interventions.

He didn’t stop there either. In response to questions about whether the network could handle the freezing temperatures that visited Johannesburg and other parts of the country this week, he also expressed confidence — some would argue overconfidence given this week’s developments — that there was enough capacity to handle the cold front hitting. SA.

What a saying about famous last words… Fast forward three days and two avalanches later and we’re once again in the grip of stage six load shedding as the bitter cold chills South Africans to the bone.

Ramokgopa had a more recent example of the folly of confidence in the study when he took to the podium on Sunday to give the nation an update on conditions at Eskom.

That, of course, was the catastrophic implosion last month of Stockton Rush’s Titan submarine, which itself was on an underwater excursion to view the wreck of the Titanic.

In an interview with the American channel ABC News, director James Cameron, who brought the world the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster Titanic It starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and Billy Zane, and he himself drew parallels between the loss of the submarine and the actual Titanic disaster.

He pointed out that overconfidence in both cases led to disaster.

Hindsight is always 20-20, but calling out the god’s name regarding progress in mitigating load leakage was always a bad idea and he must come back and chase Ramukjoba.

Something to keep in mind when he updates the nation in the future in his regular Sunday morning power plan updates. Perhaps it would be wise to include a disclaimer in each briefing: “Everything we say today is likely to prove completely wrong in the next few days.”

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