The downsides of having two countries to call home is that you get twice the agony when things go wrong.
It's probably safe to assume that I'm far from being the only South African dismayed by the latest events at Eskom. More than a year after the appointment of a new board, various committees and task teams, the situation looks as bad as it has ever been, with chunks of the country having virtually no power over the weekend.
And that was preceded by the utility being granted inflation-busting tariff increases by the regulator, effectively 14% for 2019, with 8.1% in 2020 and 5.22% to come in the following two years. In the current environment of lacklustre growth and depressed consumer spending, well-run companies providing a reliable service simply do not have this kind of pricing power, and yet South Africans, in this case, are being asked to pay more for less.
On top of that, Eskom is due to receive guaranteed government bailouts totalling R69bn over the next three years, possibly reaching R150bn over a decade. And yet, there's seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel for consumers and industry, such as mining, which may have cut jobs in multiples of the 50,000, so that all must be preserved at Eskom, whatever the cost to the rest of the country and other workers.
The company at times looks like one of those crises that seem beyond analysis as the potential solutions have all been debated. So one is left to either despair or find some comfort in South Africans' ability to laugh at themselves.
With my lights going off from 8pm on Saturday, what was I going to do with my evening other than stare at my phone screen, until it also died, observing what South Africans were saying on social media about the lack of power?
One couldn't help but be amused by people apparently in awe at the levels of economic growth the country was generating, excuse the pun, on a Saturday night. Hopefully, deputy president David Mabuza also found it funny.
On the other end of the spectrum a colleague, who presumes that I must be some kind of expert, suggested that Brexit would be a good subject for me to explore this week.
That's another one that's almost impossible to analyse, with Prime Minister Theresa May this week apparently going back to ask parliament to back her exit deal with the EU, despite it having been rejected twice already. But if you are confused, don't feel too bad. Even the experts are.
The Financial Times quoted Phil Hogan, Europe's agriculture commissioner, lamenting that it was impossible to keep up with the “noise and nonsense” coming out of the UK. The UK had just released a proposed list of post-Brexit tariff rules which did exactly what they said they hated about the so-called Irish backstop.
It said there would be no duties or checks on goods crossing the land border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, meaning the latter would be closer to the EU and be treated differently than the rest of the UK.
Headlines on Thursday revealed as much. “Chaos Reigns”, the right-wing Daily Mail screamed, while the Daily Mirror, which is more to the left, simply said “Meltdown”. The only thing that one can say about Brexit with any certainty is that it has ended up doing the opposite of giving back control as promised.
With the UK set to crash out of its most important trading relationship in less than two weeks, politicians at Westminster finally faced the reality that Brexit cannot be delivered, unless they go for the chaotic type that brings economic chaos overnight. So they voted to rule out such a no-deal Brexit.
They have also decided to seek a delay to Article 50, which set in motion the process of leaving, and was triggered long before the country had agreed on a strategy or examined the wider implications. The problem here is that the decision is no longer in their hands. The remaining 27 members have to unanimously agree to such an extension, meaning it would take just one to scupper the whole thing and trigger a chaotic rupture.
France and other countries have already said they don't favour an extension in order to simply replay the same argument, so will most likely insist on a proper plan and strategy. The UK has suggested that it wants an extension of about three months, while European Council president Donald Tusk has suggested he is looking at a longer timeframe.
What is clear is that it won't be Britain deciding the timing and terms of any extension. And yet with implications finally clear, there are no leaders brave enough to say this was a bad idea that needs to be reversed.
The one decision that's still completely in the UK's hands is to revoke Article 50 or to give the voters an opportunity to decide for themselves if Brexit is worth it now that they have a clearer idea of what it involves. One can only despair.
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