Anyone who knows a South African will be amply aware that the country is currently undergoing economically ruinous rolling blackouts labeled ‘loadshedding.’ Even if you don’t know them, South Africans are liable to follow you down the street, foam-flecked and shouting about Eskom, the corruption-addled state power utility.
The loadshedding scandal is rooted in corruption. It’s only the most visible part of a historical tragedy: how the ruling African National Congress (ANC), one of the world’s most revered liberation movements, was hollowed out by a worm at its heart. And with it, how one of the most comprehensive sets of public institutions and checks-and-balances built after the cold war was hijacked and used against the impoverished people who made unimaginable sacrifices to build them in the first place.
