Mission Impowerable: Electricity hikes and sadness
Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday July 28, 2026 11:02
You know it’s bad when your salary doesn’t even bother to wave goodbye—it just slips quietly out the back door, leaving a note that says: ‘Don’t wait up, I’m with BPC now.’ At this point, my paycheck isn’t a paycheck. It’s more like a polite suggestion. A whisper. A faint rumor that money once lived here. And every time one opens their bank app, they half expect it to say: ‘404 Balance Not Found.’ Yes, the power tariffs are just about to spike and they are coming to chip away at your salary. Nothing unites humanity quite like the collective gasp of horror when electricity tariffs spike.
So we are going to band together and form support groups like the one they formed in the 80s when teachers were unhappy with a job evaluation exercise. So yes a Tariff Increase Unsatisfied Consumers pressure group might soon be constituted to fight this!
We will all have to adjust. We must! At this point turning on a light switch feels like placing a high-stakes bet. Back in the day we used to leave the verandah lights on all night just to show people we were doing ok.
This has been ‘banned’ by Botswana Power Corporation (BPC). BPC just flashed a huge red sign that said ‘no more lights on porches at night’.
Well, not quite but something to that effect. Now you cannot just iron your shirt indiscriminately like before. You just iron the exact surface area of the shirt that will be visible on your Zoom call or at your desk.
The work place is now not only just a workplace. It is now a fully-fledged energy extraction facility. Phones, powerbanks must now be charged at work. The air conditioning at work is not just a machine—it’s a lifestyle.
You crank it up until your cubicle feels like the inside of a butchery cold room and you sit there shivering happily, knowing you’re banking ‘cold credits’ for later. Because when you get home, thanks to the electricity tariff hike, your living room is basically a sauna where even the goldfish are considering unionising.
But if you’ve maximised your office AC exposure, you carry with you a residual chill, like a human ice-cream slowly thawing on the couch.
Firewood is back with a bang. No longer will using firewood be viewed as a shameful regression to the ‘bad old days.’ It’s now a vital survival tactic and a lifestyle choice.
Picture trendy influencers posting selfies with: ‘#RusticChic, #ElectricityTariffProof, #WeWoodBeJustFine.’ Parents too are going to be busy marshalling the use of electricity in their homes.
No more midnight snacks so the fridge will be locked up at around 7pm so that those little free-loaders don’t take chances. We can’t now have a situation where the fridge is overworked because people are opening it willy-nilly.
Those days of: TV on with nobody watching and mum saying ‘So the TV is now watching itself’ Phone charger plugged in: Is it charging ghosts? Fan on: are you melting? If you are a columnist, one of your most sacred, constitutionally protected duties—right up there with freedom of speech and the right to complain about vendor food prices—is to take the mundane and whip it up until it froths like a cappuccino in the hands of a waitress with unresolved anger issues.
So when the electricity tariff goes up, I am duty bound to treat it not as a dull adjustment of numbers on a bill, but as a full blown tragedy. But dear reader cut me some slack here. I’m not exaggerating.
This tariff hike is drama in itself. I’m just here to provide the soundtrack—preferably played on a battery powered radio, because I can’t afford electricity anymore. The real power move now is remembering to switch off before the bill reminds you. For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com)
*Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email admin@ultimaxtraining.co.bw