We need to talk about darkness. Not loadshedding darkness. Not stage-whatever darkness. I mean me. I am Sierra Leone dark. Bernie Mac dark. Stale-like-old-coffee dark.
Pitch-black, midnight-without-a-generator dark.The kind of dark where the camera flash hesitates.
Where the photographer says, ‘Let’s try that again,’ and even the flashlight starts negotiating.When the power goes out at my house, visitors don’t panic. They just ask me to smile. Now electricity tariffs are rising again and soon the whole country will join me.
In the voice of John Cena:“You can’t see me!” Not because we’re entering a wrestling arena.
Because we couldn’t afford the lights. And that’s funny, until it isn’t. Because this is not just about darkness. It is about survival. Electricity has gone up by 13.61 per cent and we are being told to breathe easy because it could have been 20 per cent. That is not relief. That is hostage negotiation.“Calm down,” they say. “It could have been worse.” That is like someone robbing you politely.“My brother, relax. I only took one kidney. The other one is subsidised.” Let us be serious for a moment. Electricity is not champagne. It is not Netflix. It is not designer trainers. It is oxygen.It is the bloodstream of mining. It is the heartbeat of manufacturing.
It is the irrigation system of agriculture.
It is the lightbulb in every small shop in Matsapha trying to survive month to month. When power prices rise in Europe, people complain online from heated homes with stable incomes. When power prices rise here, a factory manager starts looking at employees the way airlines look at luggage.“Which one of you is overweight?” You cannot raise electricity costs in an economy already on life support and then act surprised when jobs begin disappearing like politicians after winning elections. Mining shafts already have cobwebs. Manufacturers are calculating costs like they are sitting final examinations.
Farmers are staring at irrigation pumps as if to say, ‘You had better grow crops that pay rent’.
And government assures us there is a scientific formula. So is gravity. Jump off a building and you will scientifically meet the ground. Here is the real comedy special: We have adopted First World pricing in a Third World economy. VAT on electricity. Demand charges. Access charges. Facility charges. At this rate, they will introduce an Emotional Damage Levy for opening your bill. We have Norway-style pricing with Matsapha wages. In developed economies, when electricity rises, households adjust thermostats. Here, when electricity rises, someone adjusts school fees. Someone delays medical treatment. Someone quietly removes meat from the grocery list. And please do not believe the myth that business tariffs do not affect ordinary people.
When factories pay more, bread costs more.Milk costs more. Transport costs more. Everything arrives with a surcharge. Export companies cannot call overseas buyers and say, ‘Good afternoon, may we increase our price because our lights are expensive?’ The global market will respond politely: “Thank you for your patriotism. We have moved production elsewhere.” Then comes that corporate word that sounds polite but feels violent: Restructuring. Restructuring is when your job is spiritually transferred to unemployment. With unemployment hovering dangerously high and youth unemployment even worse, raising electricity tariffs now is like increasing the entrance fee to a building that is already full.Graduates are holding degrees like receipts for hope.
Companies that might employ them are calculating whether it is cheaper to automate, downsize, or simply pray. The real danger is not the bill itself. It is imbalance. Are we running a power utility for the economy, or running the economy for the power utility? Yes, utilities must survive.
Yes, import costs rise. Yes, agreements and formulas exist. No one is denying mathematics. But economics is not just mathematics. It is people. Balance would mean cushioning industry before unemployment becomes permanent. Reconsidering VAT on basic utilities if growth is genuinely the objective.
Cutting inefficiencies before cutting jobs.
Phasing increases alongside economic recovery, not against it. Accelerating local generation so we are not permanently hostage to imports. You cannot save the power company by unplugging the country.
That is like trying to lose weight by cutting off your legs. Technically, you are lighter. Practically, you cannot move. Electricity is not a luxury input. It is the bloodstream of production. When you squeeze electricity, you squeeze jobs. When you squeeze jobs, you squeeze families. When you squeeze families, you squeeze stability.And instability does not knock politely. It kicks the door. People do not lose their temper over champagne.
They lose it over basics.
When the cost of living rises faster than incomes, frustration builds quietly until it stops being quiet. So yes, we can laugh about darkness.We can joke that soon, in the voice of John Cena, ‘You can’t see me’, However when darkness stops being a punchline and starts becoming economic policy, the joke changes, because this time, it is not about my complexion. It is about factories dimming. Mines slowing. Shops closing earlier.
Dreams switching off. And when a nation begins to feel like it is permanently in the dark, people do not just laugh. They howl. And once the howling starts, it will not be about kilowatt-hours. It will be about survival and survival politics is louder than any tariff formula.
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