Oh dear, have I been busted - as Jack Bliksem, my 13-year-old nephew, would say - or have I been busted?
This week, a colleague of mine, one Jeremy "Bubbles" Gordin, went along with a troop (or is that a troupe?) of hacks to Eskom's national control centre (NCC).
That's the place where they keep an eye on our national electricity grid. It's apparently all very James Bondish and sci-fi and so on - with a massive electronic map that shows exactly what's happening with electricity supply and demand throughout the nation, from the Madupi power station in heaven-knows-where right down to Jacob Zuma's electric cooker in Forest Town.
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I mean if that cooker blows, they know all about it at the NCC - the whereabouts of which I cannot tell you because it's a national key point (more about this in a second).
Similarly, if the deputy editor of this esteemed newspaper spends the whole of Saturday night watching movies on his new television set, with the 420cm-wide screen and pony harness, well, they know about this at the NCC as well.
Gordin said the place reminded him of the great Peter Sellers' movie of 1964: Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Gordin, being a male chauvinist oinker of the worst sort and middle-aged and Caucasian to boot, was somewhat taken aback to discover that the person in charge of the heartbeat of the nation - or the monitor of the heartbeat of the nation - was a young woman, and a very impressive one at that. Actually, I don't know why I remain friendly with Gordin - he's such a bloody predictable type of South African.
Anyway, having told the troupe all about the ops room and the important work going on there - how the plugs are pulled all over the nation - the manager person remarked that the staff were highly trained personnel who took more than a few years to train; in fact, that they were the equivalent in terms of skill of Boeing pilots.
"This being the case," the woman said, "I don't know who Karen Bliksem is. But I saw in her column of last week that she referred to the people who work in this centre as bozos. Now, you know, you can call me a bozo. You can call the other senior officials here today bozos. But don't call the people who work in this national key point bozos. That's just not right.
"And what's more," said the manager, "this Bliksem actually identified where we are situated. That is something that should not be done by anyone, this being a national key point".
Gordin readily agreed with her, promising that he would let me know what a bozo I had made of myself by being gratuitously rude to people whom I don't even know.
Then, for some unaccountable reason, a man called John Robbie, apparently a radio announcer from some small local radio station, muttered not so sotto voce: "I hear that Karen Bliksem has a beard."
But I am not going to pay attention to such gratuitous insults. Instead let me say: Madam Eskom manager, I stand before you (so to speak) duly disciplined and abashed. And I apologise. I should never have given away the map co-ordinates of a national key point and I should never have called your staff bozos. I apologise.
But I am faced with a problem, a veritable quandary. While Bubbles was trespassing on your courtesy and hospitality, I was being contacted by electronic mail - luckily, the electricity was working - by someone whom I may not name. She is not a key point but she is - unfortunately for you, ma'am, in contact with some key people in your organisation.
And they have given her - and she has given me - courtesy of the working electricity - an email that a very senior person in Eskom sent to a number, if not all, of his co-workers. I am not going to identify this person; my quandary is whether to run this email below? I do not want to fall foul of Eskom, having already been hauled over the coals (the wet coal?) once.
Well, I think it is my duty to the public to let them know that all those jokes that have been amusing us during blackouts - that have been keeping us sane, actually - have not gone down very well in the group communication department of Eskom.
The email reads as follows (and I assure you this is not a hoax): "A number of 'Eskom jokes' are being distributed in the organisation. These jokes are defamatory, degrading, obscene and abusive.
"In terms of the Eskom Information Security Policy: 2.13.3.4 Users shall not use any electronic communication facilities provided by Eskom to create, send, forward, store or display material that is fraudulent, sexually explicit, obscene, defamatory, racially or sexually harassing, threatening, unlawful, contrary to the rules of Eskom, the regulations of the appropriate Eskom ethics body or otherwise illegal.
"This is a request for Eskom employees that receive these 'Eskom jokes' to forward them to Group Communications and under no circumstances should these jokes be forwarded or circulated either within Eskom or outside Eskom."
Have you got that, guys? No more of those stories about Gatiep who, on meeting Satan, failing to recognise him, and then, on being given the clue that the red guy with horns is the prince of darkness, responds: "O, djy's a big wig from Eskom".
No jokes, please. We're Seffricans and we like to take our misery and wet coal seriously.
But I better shut up. Those Eskom okes are powerful. Last Saturday night someone - not a bozo - pulled the plug and the printing presses ground to a halt. You nearly missed being able to read me. Imagine that.
- This article was originally published on page 12 of Sunday Independent on January 27, 2008
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