The Lights Are Out, So Now What?

Loadshedding is a fact of life – here’s how you can turn it into an opportunity for quality family time

- Lindsay De Freitas

Get used to it – it’s the new normal. We’ve been told this before and it’s being drummed home again: load-shedding is here to stay.

Eskom’s new CEO, André de Ruyter, recently announced that rolling blackouts would continue for at least the next 18 months as the embattled power utility completely overhauls and repairs its current system – a system brought to the brink of disaster after decades of neglect, corruption, greed and mismanagement.

It’s either this or the national grid collapses, which would mean darkness for up to three weeks, sending our already ailing economy down an abyss of ruin.

Dark days indeed. We have little choice but to knuckle down and do what South Africans so often do: find a light at the end of the tunnel. Some families have already found ways not only to adapt to rolling blackouts but to embrace them.

Kelly van der Vent, a 33-year-old mom from Zeekoevlei in Cape Town, says she and her husband, Bruce (35), have made a point of “looking on the bright side of load-shedding”.

“At first, things became chaotic when we had blackouts at night,” she says. “But after a while it was as if a feeling of calm washed over the kids. I quickly realised a few hours without electricity was the best way for us to end off our day.