Naked and Afraid is a TV programme which documents American couples who are dropped off at some remote location, clothes removed, and try to survive warm and cold, prepare and eat food, stay hydrated, and suffer insects and predators, all for 21 days.

Each participant is allowed to take with them some essential implements, like a knife, carry bag, fire lighter, para cord et cetera, but not a full kit of survival stuff. It’s an interesting programme (if you can ignore the out-of-shot, ever-present camera team, medical backup and safety team). What I find most interesting (having been a fair time in the bush) is the poor choices often made by some of the participants. I’m going to outline these from two episodes.

In the first episode, a man and a woman are dropped off in the middle of the South American jungle. The heat is not too bad, but it rains. A lot. They decide to camp by a river. They are severely bitten by insects. The woman forages for food and wood. The man does virtually nothing but complain. Finally, he decides he’s had enough and is returned to civilisation, leaving the woman alone. After a few days, she’s had enough and also returns.

In the second episode, a young couple is dropped off in Central Asia, in a wild forest. They immediately find a great camping area and build a bamboo platform to sleep on. They do not build walls or a roof. It is a bit damp, but not too much. They sleep the night and then try to light a fire using a striker, which causes burning magnesium to fall onto potential tinder. They don’t know how to use the striker and so they can’t light a fire. The man decides, since they can’t light a fire, they can’t sterilise the streamwater and so they can’t drink it. Finally, they do drink it. Nothing bad happens. It takes them four days to light a fire. All around are edible snakes and in the stream any amount of fish. They make half-hearted attempts to catch them but don’t succeed. Finally, they end up eating mud crabs.

The reasons for the above is simple: the participants know they’ll get back to civilisation in 21 days. Their survival attempts are poorly thought out and executed and, after all, they are not alone, with the production team close at hand. It’s a long analogy, but this is exactly where we are with the electrical supply system in this country. If the electrical system goes down, we all go down. Eskom is not the big problem – as long as Andre de Ruyter stays around (oh please) they will get there. It is the electrical supplies to the townships and informal settlements that is the problem. If these areas are allowed to deteriorate to the point that no electricity is the norm, then we are going back 100 years. We must realise that we are alone in this and nothing is coming to save us. It’s not a big problem to solve. If we can deploy a whole army of armed soldiers to stop people from smoking and smuggling alcohol, we can deploy a whole army of soldiers in the townships and informal settlements to stop people from making illegal connections. We can arrest and jail anybody making illegal connections. If municipalities don’t pay Eskom for power, we can arrest senior officials and hand the job over to accounting and engineering firms.

In the Naked and Afraid series, all the contestants would have done better if they got some experienced advice. And, in tackling our electrical issues, experienced advice is needed. That advice is available from engineers in their sixties who are not emigrating to better places. Government just has to take this seriously. It’s not all going to get better by itself. What is needed is a task team with authority, with members who have experience in the electrical distribution industry (not professional committee members); give them authority and they’ll get the thing fixed. Soon.