Illustrative Image: Petrol pump. | Hand holding car. (Image: Freepik) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca) During the worst days of load shedding I used to wonder, idly, how my family and I would survive a national blackout. How I could still get to work and whether that work would be possible.
Hearing that Enoch Godongwana confirmed yesterday that the government will have to reimpose the full fuel levy in about two months made me wonder how I’ll survive if fuel prices go to double what they are now.
Unless peace breaks out in the Middle East soon (a headline that has been unlikely for quite some time) you and I are going to face some difficult choices.
If your memory goes back further than mine, you might remember the oil shock of the 1970s. Being an apartheid state, South Africa was singled out by Opec for particular sanctions (although much of our oil during apartheid came from Iran, before the Shah was deposed in 1979).
It is amazing to me that my first journey, from the hospital where I was born to my parents’ little house in Cape Town, was by car.
And now, as my son starts to tower over me and my daughter is not far off, almost all of their journeys still involve the internal combustion engine.
It makes no sense, really. When you consider how much has changed in our society since I was born (no jokes, please!), why are we still so dependent on an electrical process that sets alight a dangerous flammable liquid?
Although, thinking about it again makes you realise how some things are really hard to change.
I know that in many other cities people blissfully ride to work on bicycles or e-bikes or something. Heavens, a man as oddly irrational as Boris Johnson was riding from meeting to meeting when he was mayor of London – why can’t we do that here?
The answer, as you might already know, lies in our awful urban terrain.
It’s not just that our cities were designed as apartheid cities, where so many people spend about 40% of their income just getting to and from work. Our political geography is such that our cities are incredibly spread out. We do not have the densification that you see in many other places.
It’s also the sheer physical geography. Most cities in places like Europe are built on floodplains, where a major river meets the sea. It was a logical place for humans to gather and build a town and then Paris or a collection of villages and then London.
Our cities are not like that. Joburg in particular is only where it is because gold was underneath it. One of the things that people who arrive in the city for the first time point out is that it is much hillier than they expected.
During the four or so years that I cycled to work on most days this came with advantages and disadvantages. Going home meant a wonderful ride through gridlocked traffic.
But going into Sandton meant a long struggle up the hill to the Benmore shopping centre. And then another one up to the Gautrain station.
I would defy any advocate of the idea of cycling to work in Joburg, to attend a board meeting after riding up Sandton Drive.
I think the other problem is that for so long load shedding made the idea of buying an electric car a bit of a grim joke. Even now, when their time has surely come (you can buy an out-of-the-box BYD Dolphin for about R350,000), what Eskom charges you for electricity might not make it worthwhile.
Basically, unless you have a good solar power system, an electric car doesn’t make much sense yet. Although it might by 5 May (on that morning fuel prices are due to rise again).
So then, what options do I have if the fuel price just keeps shooting up?
I suppose the most rational choice, if I’m forced to stop using a car, is some kind of scooter. Something powered, so that I can arrive at a meeting not only less sweaty but also more safely.
It could be something petrol-powered. But it could also, more excitingly, be powered by electricity. Even a smallish home solar system should be able to keep something like that going.
I haven’t mentioned this formally to my wife yet, but when I do, I fully expect her to ask if I would be happy to take my daughter to school on the back of the thing. Given how awful and aggressive our traffic is, it is the one thing that does make me pause.
Of course, if fuel prices go that high, there should be a lot less traffic.
And our roads could be dominated by people who’ve made the same choice as me, zipping up and down, with kids and backpacks and laptops and no doubt a cat box, going from one place to another.
Now that I think about it, that’s quite appealing. It would be quieter. There would be less aggression. And roads could be smaller – think of all the space that would be freed up. You could even build more cheaper housing in Cape Town’s City Bowl.
It does feel like science fiction. But it is surely more rational than still relying on the same chemical reaction that got me home from the hospital in my first week of life. DM