The arrogance and swift action displayed by Eskom in bringing back load-shedding smacks of the retributive nature of a fairy tale character named Pied Piper.
This vengeful character stems from German folklore which holds that in 1824 the town of Hamelin in that country was plagued by rats which turned the lives of the local denizens into misery and chaos.
According to the fairy tale, the rats literally invaded every space in the town of Hamelin; they occupied their beds, living rooms, schools, workplaces, churches, playgrounds and most depressingly, the rodents helped themselves to the food and water that were meant for consumption by the hapless citizens of Hamelin.
Now all along the mayor of the town of Hamelin had been regarded as a wise man, but after failing to get rid of the rampant rats for the longest of time, the local citizens changed their opinion of him and openly described him as a useless guy who can’t rescue them from misery when expected to do so.
Then one day a seemingly wily character playing a pipe came to the town of Hamelin and sought an audience with the jittery Mayor.
The Mayor and the wily character, who came to be known as the Pied Piper because of the pipe musical instrument he was playing, agreed that the Pied Piper would play the said pipe to lure the rats out of the town and drown them in the river of the town.
According to the agreement, the Pied Piper would be remunerated for his efforts.
The Pied Piper duly played his alluring tune as he led the way to the river, where all the rats followed him before he drowned them therein.
Now when he approached the Mayor for his fee, he was branded a sorcerer; that he was actually the one who had brought the rats to the town and would therefore not be paid for solving a problem which he himself had created.
The citizens of the town agreed wholly with the Mayor’s assertion and at once regarded him as a wise man again, this as he could discern that the Pied Piper was a charlatan who wanted to make money out of a self-induced misery.
Without further ado the disgruntled Pied Piper went away, but before that he warned all and sundry that since they as citizens of the town didn’t want to pay him what was due to him, their children and their descendants would pay dearly for the evils of their parents.
Now one Sunday, when all adults were at church, the Pied Piper appeared in the town, played the alluring tune with his pipe once again and all children in the town of Hamelin followed him out of the town and went to live with him in a faraway place known as Transylvania, where their parents would never again see them.
Needless to say, the parents once again blamed the Mayor for being stingy with money, opining in the process that he should have just paid the Pied Piper what was due to him and prevent a situation whereby they have now lost their kids.
Now back to reality, Eskom got a tariff increase which is far less than it had asked for, and as a result carried out its threat that failure to be granted the money it had requested would result in it being incapacitated to deliver electricity, and that load-shedding would return. If this is not retribution by Eskom, then I don’t know what is.