Are Middle – Low Class South Africans The Prime Consumers Of Consumers?

It’s no news to anyone living in South Africa that the supply and availability of electricity in the country is far from abundant. The seasonal power cuts are a constant reminder to the nation that South Africa has energy challenges.

The true reasons for this aren’t so clear; the latest from the media was that the heavy rainfall of played a huge role in the Feb-March power cuts. Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger reported that  the rain had wet the coal therefore making it more difficult for the coal to be converted to energy… Other reasons that have surfaced in the past were that Eskom wasn’t well managed but that isn’t the focal point of this article.

Almost every evening when low to middle class South Africa sit around the TV to watch their favorite soapies. i.e. Generations, Scandal, Muvhango a ‘power-alert’ notification that looks like one of these is bound to pop-up.

“Power-alert’ is an initiative taken up by Eskom to notify people across the country of their consumption rate. Usually the messages communicated suggest that people turn off their appliances in efforts to preserve electricity but my question is, why is this message being communicated only to SABC’s middle-low class audience and not corporations or SA’s wealthy societies?

Consumerism at its best always sees the wealthy, the powerful or those with more social capital consume resources frivolously then those at the bottom of the hierarchy have to suffer the consequences. On a broader scale, we can see how western societies used up a lot of their resources; land, minerals, oil and others then later penetrated African nations for their resources.

It is not high time the media focuses communications about conservation and energy preservation to the prime consumers, in this case, South African businesses and high LSM homes?