After the Bell: Life's a gas... until it’s not

I think my first memory of gas is when my family and I moved from Cape Town to Joburg in a previous millennium.

It was 1985, and after six months in a rented house in Orange Grove (where I was often sent to fetch the newspaper… and would read it on the way back – see how that ended) we moved into a house in what I think might now be called “Old Joburg”.

It came with a connection to the municipal gas supply, something I didn’t know existed before that.

It was quite fun in a way – there was a gas stove and gas geysers which made all sorts of interesting noises when you tried to have a hot shower.

Considering that we moved in in the middle of a (freezing!) Highveld winter, it took us a while to manage the taps.

But my parents did the financially responsible thing at the time: convert from gas to electricity.

This is not a decision anyone would take now. Instead, over time, gas has become so much cheaper than electricity.

In our current home we have one of those stoves that has an electric oven and a gas hob. And it was one of the most liberating things in the world to be able to wake up in the morning, notice with an unsurprised grunt that the power was off, and still switch on a kettle.

The freedom gas brings goes way beyond the house. When we go camping we can use a small gas canister to make coffee in the mornings, cook porridge for breakfast and braai marshmallows at night (if I’ve done something catastrophic to the braai fire again).

I know only two things for sure about kitchens.

The first is that Jamie Oliver must be the most irritating person ever, in the entirety of human history, to have ever been in one.

The second is that so many people really love cooking with gas, to the point that “cooking on gas” is an expression of joy.

There is something about it that really makes many people happy.

Baking, of course, something I have just slightly more experience with (my crunchies, based on my mother’s recipe, are famous for their high-calorie content), is much better with the precise control that electricity brings.

A couple of years ago, at the height of load shedding, a friend moved into a house on a street where some homes had Egoli Gas. He was incredibly keen to get it installed; it would have given him cheaper hot water, with much lower cooking costs.

But he was told that his house was just one block too far away – he could see the road where the network ended. He was told that if he could get all of the residents together and they were willing to part with quite a hefty investment, the network could be extended to his house.

In the end he did what any sensible person would do and invested in a gas heater system using cylinders instead.

I love the freedom those cylinders bring. For a certain amount of cash upfront you know that you can make coffee every morning for quite a few months.

And there is nothing anyone who claims to be running the City of Johannesburg can do to frustrate you.

I do draw the line at a gas braai though. I’m happy to use one for a quick family outside cooking experience. But if you invite me to a braai at your house, I do expect to see some actual combustion. Otherwise I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of the liquid refreshment I might bring with me.

I was slightly disturbed this morning to see that Sasol had warned Egoli Gas that the huge flooding in Mozambique might lead to a temporary gas shortage. And while Egoli Gas says their system is entirely stable, it does remind us about what people keep calling the “gas cliff”, which appears to be looming.

Business Day [reported](https://www.businessday.co.za/news/2026-01-29-mozambique-holds-key-to-averting-2028-gas-cliff/) this morning that the government is making progress in negotiations with Mozambique to make sure this doesn’t happen.

And it reminds me about something else, that we in southern Africa are all so connected to each other.

We have used electricity from Mozambique’s Cahora Bassa Dam for years, and their gas is only going to become more important for us.

That means that the insurgency in Cabo Delgado province could one day affect us. And the political change that I think will inevitably come to Mozambique could be important.

And it doesn’t matter how many gas canisters I can keep in my storeroom, the fact is that developments there will have an impact on us eventually.

Which is why it’s so important to keep a close eye on what happens in our neighbours.

Because for the moment, life’s a gas.

Right up until it’s not. DM