<!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073741899 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} p {mso-style-priority:99; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0cm; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.il {mso-style-name:il; mso-style-unhide:no;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –Imagine a South African suburb without electricity- it’s easy if you try. Now imagine it without water. No fuel to sate the now stagnant Land Cruisers and stand-by generators. A not so distant future, where escalating inflation and galloping food costs will mean only Cabinet ministers can ever afford to stop off at Woolies.Imagine two beleaguered couples in this affluent suburb, the Dlaminis and the Goldbergs say, living on opposite sides of the formerly electrified picket fence. Shacked up, waiting in their three-storey mansions, for their numbers to be called on the overcrowded emigration list for Aus!
Pity Madame Dlamini, who in the absence of her microwave and electric grill, has resorted to cooking on her show- piece fireplace in the dining room, its synthetic rock embers replaced by wood salvaged from last season’s Weatherly’s lounge suite. Certainly, the wood- smoke redolence of a Transkei hut would take a little getting used to, as would doing her daily dishes and laundry in the now fizzless Jacuzzi.
Pity corporate honcho Mr Goldberg- now reduced to famished homestead hunter-stalking the over-grown lawns, poaching his neighbours Pekanese, while resolving his Sushi pangs with a spot of spear fishing in the golf course Koi Pond. See Mrs Goldberg who, without her overworked sun bed has grown pallid and dishevelled, while Mrs Dlamini, through the loss of her hair iron, has had to let that irrepressible afro get the better of her.
Similarly with the plugs would vanish their husbands’ extensive range of grooming power- tools (so too the daily bickering over bathroom time.) And what if, without their Men’s Health’ morning rituals, both Mr D and G finally come to resemble the very men, the magazine had promised to make them–savage and essential, rugged and hardy. And perhaps with no soapies or Super-Sport, to come between them, husband and wife would be forced to sit amidst the mandatory romance of candle light and communicate – the type of reminiscing that might lead them onto recollections of their Varsity years: Alas when nights were spent ‘voluntarily’ in the dark, when power outs only ever occurred when dig’s electricity bills weren’t paid, which considering booze was always a higher priority than illumination, tended to be pretty often.
And in this dim flicker, might Mr Dlamini see his estranged wife resembling the gawky Accountancy student he had first laid eyes upon in the Wits canteen? Might Mrs Goldberg come to learn, that away from the distraction of numbers and (slinky office) figures, her husband appears less the over- worked machine and more a life-like human being? And with our two housewives vibrators disempowered (batteries these days being hard to come by) and their hubbies without transport to the office or secretaries to inspire them into working late, would both couples eventually gravitate back to the solace of their shared bedrooms? Take heart to know that their combined insecurities need no longer face amplification beneath the unflattering excess of power-saving light bulbs.
And in the end the couples might learn, that all those marriage counselling classes and self- help books had nothing on what the dark ages could teach them: that light is more a state of heart and mind then a failed Eskom matter and that sometimes, just sometimes illumination can be forged in the most unexpected of places.
