[aq9]

As a South African (living abroad for many years, but still with the bulk of my extended family there), this seems overly alarmist. If you review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis , very few consumers experienced anything like 50% of total hours without electricity even in the darkest days of the load-shedding in 2023. And 2024 was, comparatively, a good year, probably the best since 2020/1.

RE the police force and private security, that has been a fact of life in South Africa for decades, not a new development. Anyone with the means employs private security, in the same way that anyone with means utilizes private health care, not public health care. Here South Africa is not that much different from other high-crime and high-inequality countries like Brazil and Mexico.

[firebaze]

Mail me at (redacted) and I provide his contact address. You may want to give him some tips.

To be honest I may have exaggerated the power outage ratio, as I am not a first-hand observer; but I tend to give some credibility to his description of the living situation over there, esp. as they want to move.

My point is more or less that denying things, even if not fully true, strengthens demagogues like Trump instead of weakening them.