But fair enough. I’ve called both this government and Eskom as incompetent, and disputed the wisdom of an economic policy that not only underlies this failure, but also increases the gravity of its impact by preventing alternative service providers to pick up the dropped ball.

I have, however, never described South Africans (or worse, some have charged, black South Africans) as a class as incompetent. On the contrary, and I have been quite explicit about this in my commentary, angry though it is.

I have every confidence in the resourcefulness, ingenuity and energy of individual South Africans. But that means considering the people on their own merits, and not simply by the proxy of a paternalistic government.

As to being moonstruck, I hope Ivo is not such an earnest capitalist agitator or so consumed by unfettered rage that he has lost any sense of humour or perspective. Try a bit of lunar solace, Ivo!

Pacific Gas and Electric went bust, and Southern California Edison needed a bailout. Companies that gamed the flawed regulations paid billions of dollars in settlements, and at least one, Enron, went bankrupt under a cloud of criminal charges.

I don’t know who you know that thought highly of the Californian state government, Governor Davis and Enron, but there can’t be very many of them.

Those of use who are highly upset are upset not only because of the likely cost to our economy and our capability for reducing poverty, building prosperty and creating jobs (which strikes me as a perfectly justifiable reason for outrage), but also because we’re proud South Africans. We’re, frankly speaking, ashamed of our leaders’ failures, and aren’t prepared to let them slide. We’re ashamed that, unlike Governor Davis, nobody is being held accountable for this disaster.

Patriotism implies proud loyalty to your country, not blind loyalty to leaders who fail in their responsibility to their citizens.

And, it’s hard to blame foreign journalists for reporting SA through a negative prism in the current climate – it’s the convergence of all the scandal and bad news that makes for such an arresting and powerful (bad puns intended) story.

So, thanks for the beautiful imagery of the night sky over Africa. It’s the same sky I marvel at in the dark from my farmhouse porch on the outskirts of Canberra, where the absence of street lights is a blessing.

And this may make you feel better about your own infrastructure problems: I live 25kms from Australia’s seat of government but my (ancient) phone line goes down after each rainfall; my property has no mobile phone coverage and; our national water crisis means I have to truck drinking water in (via an unsealed road). But I’m not isolated enough to avoid the cultural cringe associated with a national holiday that celebrates the invasion of Aboriginal Australia and the international embarrassment visited by marauding sports fans chanting “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie – Oi, Oi, Oi”!

Here’s one Aussie cheering SA on: “Africa, Africa, Africa! Go, go, go! Here ends essay.