When you get rid of a scapegoat, like De Ruyter, who’s left to blame?

I remember it as if it were yesterday: the night I came home to find the gate obstinately refusing to obey the remote control. It was a shattering experience — and I was overwhelmed at once by anger, disbelief, despair and helplessness.

It was more distressing than I could have imagined. In the absence of a target to direct my frustrations at, I was left cursing the dark.

Load-shedding, a term probably coined by a bureaucrat with a sense of humour, has become the bane of our lives.

There’s nothing more disorienting than groping for a candle and a box of matches in the dark — things not often regarded as essential. Suddenly, your sanity seems to depend on them.

Eskom, once one of the best-run companies in the world and producing the cheapest electricity, has, in a few years, been reduced by the ANC — to use that expressive South African term — to a skorokoro.

Now we make sure where we keep the candles or lanterns. Darkness and gloom have become our companions.

It would seem that the ANC has finally delivered. It’s perhaps something the party should be able to celebrate — plunging the country into darkness — as it meets at its Nasrec conference this weekend.

Any flicker of hope has been dimmed. Load-shedding, 15 years in the making, has outlived three presidents and a succession of CEOs. Still the crisis rolls on, and it’s getting worse.

Making electricity available to the majority was the new government’s proud achievement after years of indifference and outright discrimination by the apartheid government. It’s therefore ironic that the ANC, through corruption and incompetence, should in effect again starve people of such an essential service.

But what grates is the nonchalant way the government and its institutions seem to be handling such a grave matter.

An Eskom security official complained in an interview with the Sunday Times that the role of both the police and the National Prosecuting Authority in prosecuting people involved in what amounts to brazen sabotage leaves much to be desired. Suspects are often released on ridiculously low bail.

On Thursday, Ramaphosa boasted that the economy was turning a corner. But how can that be when the country seems inexorably to be turning into a jungle on his watch?

It doesn’t seem to have dawned on these panjandrums that what’s happening at Eskom is flat out treason. But the lead is apparently set at the top.

This week President Cyril Ramaphosa was asked what he or the government would do now that the country was on stage 6 load-shedding.

Well, he said lamely, the responsible people would meet and see what could be done. He seemed totally disengaged. He doesn’t feel your pain.

This, Mr President, is the No 1 problem facing the country. It should be your absolute priority.

And Eskom is not the only area of great concern for the country. Everything around Ramaphosa, hobbled by indecision, seems to be falling apart.

The rail infrastructure has been decimated, leaving cargo to be transported by road, hence the increasing number of fatal accidents involving huge trucks we’ve seen lately.

So-called forums, made up of thugs who are clearly ANC members, have been going around aggressively extorting huge percentages from construction companies — with total impunity.

These people are known and make no attempt to conceal their identity. Yet nothing is said or done by the government.

Members of the taxi industry have for years been involved in shooting at long-distance buses and, in some instances, killing passengers. Again, the government has decided to sit on its hands.

This week the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber appealed to the government to declare cable theft a national emergency. They’re barking at the moon. Nothing will be done.

On Thursday at the ANC banquet, Ramaphosa boasted that the economy was turning a corner. But how can that be when the country seems inexorably to be turning into a jungle on his watch?

But what the ANC seem to have in spades is an appetite for settling internal scores. That’s what’s consuming its attention. If there’s any doubt of this, one has only to look at the chaos at its conference. The factions can’t stand each other. What keeps them stuck together is the love of power. And Phala Phala is the latest grist to the mill.

There’s in fact a direct link between the resignation this week of Eskom CEO André de Ruyter and Ramaphosa’s little difficulty. De Ruyter’s resignation came a day after a parliamentary vote not to proceed with impeachment proceedings against Ramaphosa.

Finally, Gwede Mantashe got his wish. It’s his reward for having saved the president from himself, by persuading him not to resign.

Mantashe has waged an unrelenting war against De Ruyter, seemingly without any pushback from Pravin Gordhan, the responsible minister and the man who employed De Ruyter.

Now that Mantashe has become Ramaphosa’s minder, his star has obviously risen and he was able to get his way.

That Ramaphosa could allow major differences between key ministers over the running of an entity critical to the country’s future to fester for such a long time is yet more evidence of his fragile backbone. But in De Ruyter, they’re barking up the wrong tree. He was a convenient scapegoat.

They’re trying to mislead the public into believing that the turmoil at Eskom is the doing of a recent arrival, when in fact they’ve instigated and sat on the problem for close on two decades. They’ll certainly be waving De Ruyter’s scalp like a trophy at the conference.

Now that he’s become the sacrificial lamb, they’ll be hard-pressed to find another scapegoat. But the problem will remain, and the country will continue to suffer.