Port, sherry, champagne, Melton Mowbray pies, Cornish pasty, Scotch Whiskey, et cetera, are products whose names are protected by international laws. The notional purpose of the laws is to (I quote) “protect the reputation of the regional foods, help producers obtain a premium price for their authentic products, promote rural and agricultural activity and eliminate unfair competition and misleading of consumers by nongenuine products, which may be of inferior quality or of different flavour”.

Actually, this last sentence is mostly rubbish. The purpose of the law is to “help producers obtain a premium price for their authentic products”. This is because, in the 1980s, it dawned on some (oh so slowly rose the realisation in the British and European minds) that places like South Africa were making sherry, port and champagne (for example), which were better than products made in Spain, Portugal and France, largely due to those producers discovering that they could pass off inferior stuff as the genuine thing.

Now we, in our beautiful country, do not need any law to protect the names of our products. This is because we have a much more devious protection system than the First World bureaucrats. The first protection system is based on product uniqueness. So what? No, bru, you don’t get it. An example: there is no such thing as South African boerewors. There is Cape boerewors. And unique types from Paarl, Wellington, Bloemfontein, Durban, Harrismith . . . and so on and so on. There is a standard spec which sets out the minimum meat, fat and content. But the spices and skin vary from location to location. Good luck standardising that. The same for biltong. The same for pofaddertjies (you know, vetderm van skaap, lewer van skaap, skaapstert vet, speserye ui knoffel).

So, South African product uniqueness needs no protection. With other foods, we are more cunning. Many South Africans eat cooked maize meal. As in pap or ipap. We also get umphokoqo, uphuthu namasi and amawethu. Here, no unique name protection is required, since outside of Africa, nobody can pronounce these names. Even the simple pap has difficulties: if we tell a US citizen that it rhymes with ‘up’, it will come out as ‘pearp’. A Brit would pronounce it ‘pop’. To pronounce umphokoqo, you have to say ‘paw paw clor’ and end the word with a soft click of the tongue. Not that easy.

However, in the matter of maize meal, a national disaster looms. It is this: a whole lot of people are saying that something is recently wrong with maize meal – it is not cooking properly anymore; it is taking too long to cook, it doesn’t get properly cooked and has to be thrown away. There are newspaper reports. Maize meal producers, asked to comment, seemingly do not reply. This could be the beginning of the end.

However, not so! In an in-depth appreciation of the situation, your fearless Engineering News & Mining Weekly columnist offers the following: (a) Eskom will no longer work in many township areas, since it is not safe for them or their vehicles. (b) Owing to many illegal connections in these areas, Eskom regularly disconnects the supply at times of high electrical demand and reconnects at low demand. (c) You can’t cook maize meal when there is no electricity. (d) Many people start cooking maize meal when Eskom puts the power back. (e) The local electrical demand thus gets very high on an overloaded power system with many illegal electrical connections. (f) The result is that the supply voltage falls below specification – from 220 V nominal to about 190 V and the power to the cooking pot falls by 25%. (g) The result is that the temperature of the maize meal in the pot never gets high enough to cook the meal. (h) Result: uncooked pap.

A very interesting social problem. A canary in the coal mine. A people’s revolution looms. What’s to be done? Get rid of the illegal connections. Pay outstanding accounts. Or cook over a fire like years ago.