My experience in a queue

I have to share this with you. For all we know, you have experienced it to. Only that you don’t have a column like me. We all know that the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) also know as, Zimbabwe Electricity Sometimes Available, the power utility, has had its fair share of bashing in the local media. But I feel that they sometimes bring it on themselves, the state of their bill payment halls being a case in point. To be more specific, Halco House is a farce. What I will detail below is a true story. Names have been excluded to protect the innocent (and the inconvenienced.)

Day One: Yours truly, being a conscientious citizen, decide to pay my electricity bill, even though I last received a bill in ninenteen- gocha nhembe (when dinasours still roamed the earth.) I calmly queue in front of the Enquiries Desk with a 200-page novel, well prepared for the long haul. Thirty minutes later (this queue was short) the kind gentleman behind the desk tells me that I have not been billed. So could I be a nice consumer and pay a million dollars (old currency) which he tells me is a guesstimate.

Looking at the long and winding payments queue, I decide to write a cheque as I normally do under such circumstances. Lo and behold I find the cheque box sealed. The security guard standing nearby politely advises that I join the queue and pay cash. Cheques are not being accepted because they might ‘bounce’ because of the currency revaluation. Seeing the prospect of spending the rest of my short life in the payments queue, I give up and head for work.

Day Two: I am pleasantly surprised by the short queue at the enquiries desk. There are just two of us there. This is going to be nice and quick, I sing to myself. The chap at the counter informs me that there is a ‘problem’ with my electricity account.

“Go round and join the Credit Control queue labelled BYO East,” he advises. I then discover why the enquiries queue is so short. It has reformed at Credit Control. For those of you who did not know, the Credit Control queue is composed mainly of sheepish looking people whose supplies have been disconnected for non-payment. The difference is that I am yet to be disconnected, which is why I want to find out how much I owe.

Remember, I have not received a bill since dinosaurs roamed the earth. The queue is visibly longer than the one at the ‘BYO’ West counter and is not moving an inch. The lady there is busy cleaning her keyboard. I assume she is the cleaner by the way she meticulously scrubs the computer. We later discover otherwise and that there is a ‘problem’ with her terminal. We are then shunted to another one and she promptly starts work.

Meanwhile, the BYO West queue has disappeared and the lady there is dutifully telling anyone who strays there that she deals only with the WEST. Our queue has grown much longer and soon I regret the folly of having moved from Gwabalanda to Parklands. After going through two customers, the ‘cleaning’ lady abruptly moves back to the first terminal which is now working after some tinkering by a very smart looking young man in glasses.

By then the bearded white fellow behind me has blown a couple of fuses. In fact, he is on the verge of inciting a riot. It also doe not help matters that an old white lady has cut the queue in the process. Apparently, he has been queuing since the day before and wonders aloud why there are no bills being sent out and why the computers don’t seem to work. Good questions those, but the rest of us are like new-born kittens.

It’s now my turn and the ‘cleaning lady’ informs me that I have a credit, meaning that ZESA owe me money instead! However, since bills are sure to materialise this century, I’m advised to pay an estimated amount. This, I am kindly warned, is the prudent thing to do because when the bills do eventually arrive and I am found wanting, I will surely be cut off. It’s a small victory for a small man like me to be owed money by a utility. I take a glance at the payments queue and I decide that I do not want to miss seeing my children grow into adulthood standing there.

This first appeared in the Sunday News column On The Lighter Side also at www.lenoxmhlanga.blogspot.com

So sorry for the silence

I have received some desperate e-mails - and some unflattering ones too - about my silence. Let me start by apologizing, which seems to be a very common African trait. I am velly solly! OK ? That's done it, satisfied? Now the explanation; so much has happened in the past month...Where should I begin?

Well, he country is still is a mess and those in charge haven't stopped screwing all and sundry. Sorry for the language bu I am afraid that is how the shitstem has got us to. Gono has changed the currency...again. It is now criminal to be found with lots of money. At least until the 21st of August. Then I suppose everything goes back to normal with the rich continuing to screw the poor.

My grandmother and aunt passed away in rapid succession in the last two weeks. That has knocked the steam out of my father who has had to shoulder most of the nitty gritties. I worry for him and wish he could sell a coulple of cows and take a well deserved holiday. My granny was 95 when she died. She possessed such a wicked sense of humour. I could sit for hours listening to her spiced up stories. Like the one about the witch hunter, Gawule, also known in other parts as Tsikamutanda. This character would be summoned by the Chief with the cooperation of the community in reaction to a spate of deaths or drought.

The roadshow would roll into the villages and soon witches, their apprentices and paraphenelia would be paraded before the amazed crowds. If a witch had left some of his tools behind, lets say, a snake or goblin or such like, he would told by Gawule to hamba thatha munye! (Go and collect the rest of your stuff.) Incredulous as it may sound, Gogo would make comic references to neighbours exposed with all sorts of witching gear some of which would make your hanir stand on end!

I will never forget Granny, on one of her excursion into the city to our home way back when I was a kid, and her funny references to what she saw on TV. She was convinced that the Weatherman was the chief cause of the droaught with all those little diagrams about low and high pressure gibberish. She also had a theory that the then Apartheid government was shooting at the rain clouds on their side of the border so that they would get the rain and we wouldn't.

I promise to contribute to this blog every week from now on in her memory. May her soul rest in peace. Lala kuhle ntomenhle yakoNkiwane, Mabhonzo, Mthengisi sizakukhumbula.