Those South Africans who still don’t see the point of belonging to the Brics grouping were presented with a stunningly compelling argument on Monday, as Eskom’s fleet of power stations magically healed itself at the very moment the first delegates set foot in the country for this week’s summit.
Admittedly, the respite was temporary, with the morning’s mysteriously improved generating capacity suddenly falling away in the afternoon again; but this was obviously because the delegates had had long flights and needed to take a nap, and as anyone will tell you, not even the most powerful Brics wizards can keep power stations running in their sleep.
Of course, certain jaded killjoys might insist that the dramatic recovery of Eskom’s fleet wasn’t magic at all but rather the result of the ANC ordering the utility to crank the turbines up to 11 and to burn not just diesel but the chip oil from the fourth-floor cafeteria and André De Ruyter’s old desk.
After all, nothing casts a pall over plans to own the future like waiting in the dark for your hors d’oeuvres while Fikile Mbalula frantically tries to light a Weber and Gwede Mantashe gambols around him yelling “More coal! More coal!”
No, anything worse than a smattering of stage 1 load-shedding, and a soupçon of afternoon stage 3, would have been out of the question for the ANC government, especially as the Brics try to lure Saudi Arabia closer by tossing bucketfuls of fish guts over the back of the boat.
I’m exaggerating, of course. Saudi Arabia is far more sophisticated than that, being able to detect a distressed asset or unscrupulous sports star from more than 2km away, even in murky water. If the kingdom does sign up and turn the Brics into the SAbrics, bringing with it the capital letters — and capital in general — SA failed to provide, it will be a real coup for ... Comrades! No! Coup is just a turn of phrase! Please come out from under that pile of human shields! Comrade Fikile, perhaps let’s send round the chipolatas now?
For SA, the benefits of closer ties with the Saudis are also obvious, and not only because they might pay us millions of dollars to make sure our top footballers never leave this country to sap fans’ love of the game abroad.
Even if it turns out we have nothing they want — after all, how many politicians can one family own before they just start cluttering up the guest wing? — we could definitely still enjoy a lucrative exchange of skills. They could teach us how to be an autocratic theocracy where democracy is illegal, while still remaining the darling of the West; Snuki Zikalala could teach them how to raise journalists to be so docile and compliant that you never need to cut them up and stuff them into suitcases. The possibilities are endless.
Even better, Monday’s ruling by the Reserve Bank on the stashed Phala Phala cash will make these sorts of transactions so much easier in future. In a move being described as bold and progressive by money launderers everywhere, the Bank has explained that you probably shouldn’t bring huge numbers of dollars into the country, but if you have and there’s no evidence you used them in a completed or “perfected” transaction, perhaps because your cattle never got delivered or there’s no receipt, or one of the transacting parties says he was somewhere else at the time, then that’s all dandy and there’s nothing to see.
Yes, it’s been a grand week for President Cyril Ramaphosa so far. Still, he is a polite man and will no doubt keep his ebullience in check around the Russian delegation, still smarting as it is from watching Russia’s prestigious Luna-25 mission not so much land on the moon as in it, in lots of little pieces.
Ramaphosa might not have a space programme of his own, but as someone who has worked closely with Mbalula, Angie Motshekga and Bheki Cele he will know how it feels to be constantly embarrassed by spectacular public failure.
He will know that the crash has not only injured the pride of his Russian guests, but also presented them with an administrative nightmare as the Kremlin now needs to use valuable time and scriptwriting resources to rebrand it as a special lunar operation designed to obliterate a gang of Nazi astronauts who had infiltrated a crater that was historically and ethnically Russian.
And this is to say nothing of the schlep of rounding up the scientists involved and giving them the option of continuing their work either on the tenth floor of a hospital in Moscow or the top step of a trench near Bakhmut.
But our president is in too good a mood to dwell on these sorts of problems. The diesel is flowing into Eskom, the champagne is chilled and he doesn’t have to pretend to be surprised that Vladimir Putin has arrived, and then pretend to arrest him, and then pretend not to know how he’s escaped.
There’s a lot not to like about the job. The acrimony. Fikile. The fact that the cafeteria never serves quail-egg omelettes and when you bring it up they cough “oligarch!” into their fist as if you can’t hear.
But weeks like these — these are the weeks that make it all worthwhile.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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