The Silence After the Generator

There’s a moment, just after the generator dies, where the silence hits harder than the power cut. No hum of electricity, no buzz from the fridge, no click of the Wi-Fi reconnecting. Just you, your thoughts, maybe the faint clatter of cutlery, and the distant bark of a dog confused by the dark. Loadshedding didn’t just rob us of electricity, it exposed everything else humming in the background. And when the lights went out, so did the distractions.

In that first wave of powerlessness, people groaned. The WhatsApp groups lit up, ironically, while the lights didn’t. Neighbours swore in sync. Candles emerged from drawers like sacred relics. In some homes, power banks and backup batteries kicked in like seasoned relief players. In others, nothing happened. The dark just settled in.

We started talking. Properly. Without a screen flickering in the corner or the background whirr of life-on-demand. Families who hadn’t sat around a table in weeks now found themselves playing 30 Seconds by candlelight. Couples stopped scrolling and started speaking, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with uncomfortable honesty. The TV couldn’t offer an escape, and so we turned to each other. At first out of boredom, then out of something deeper.

Kids learned how to entertain themselves without a glowing rectangle. Elders told stories that only surfaced when the house got still. Even the braai, that eternal South African fallback, turned into something more than just cooking. It became ritual. A way to share heat and time while the street dipped into collective blackout.

There’s a vulnerability in the dark. It levels things. You hear the conversations next door. You notice the way your mother always lights the same candle first. You realise how loud your own breathing is. But most of all, you notice people. Not just the ones in your house, but the ones in the complex, the street, the neighbourhood. The guy who always has a torch ready. The aunty who shouts “It’s back!” like it’s New Year’s Eve every time the power returns. The teenager who plays music from a Bluetooth speaker when the silence becomes too heavy to carry.

Generators, for all their convenience, also became a source of division. Those with backup power were envied, or resented, or depended on. The neighbour with the inverter became the unofficial phone-charging station. The corner spaza shop with a fridge still running was a lifeline for cold drinks and meat that wouldn’t spoil. And then there were those with nothing but matches and mood.

Yet, even in the gaps, in the flickering shadows, we found a strange kind of unity. A shared inconvenience that levelled CEOs and schoolkids alike. No one escaped it. Everyone adapted.

People became inventive. Candleholders made out of old bottles. Loadshedding schedules stuck to the fridge with magnets. Voice notes saying, “What stage are we on again?” became more frequent than good morning texts. And those two golden words, “It’s back”, echoed down apartment blocks like a hymn. Not shouted, but shared. A spark of communal relief.

We started listening. Actually listening. Because when your phone is at 4% and the router’s off, conversations don’t compete with notifications. You hear the tone behind the words. You pick up on the silences. You notice the things people say when they think no one’s really paying attention.

And when the generator finally splutters to a stop, when the fridge stops humming, the lights go out again, and the house returns to real quiet, something strange happens. You realise you were holding your breath. And when you let it go, what remains is stillness. Not the panicked stillness of something missing, but the reverent quiet of something uncovered.

That silence taught us things. It taught us that convenience had made us forget each other. That we filled every gap with noise, news, shows, timelines, distractions, and called it living. It taught us that discomfort breeds closeness if we let it. That our most honest moments often happen when nothing is buffering, streaming, or blinking.

It also taught us patience. Real patience. The kind that doesn’t come with a loading bar or an estimated wait time. Just the kind where you sit, and wait, and light a candle. You eat dinner cold. You wash dishes by torchlight. You laugh when someone knocks something over in the dark. And when the lights finally blink back on, when the generator grumbles to life, or Eskom graces us with mercy, you feel something close to awe.

But then the screens light up again. The kettle starts boiling. The fridge hums. Life returns to its usual speed, and the quiet slips away unnoticed. Everyone goes back to their corners. The kids to their tablets. The adults to their emails. The silence becomes a forgotten guest, and we pretend nothing happened. Until the next time. Until the lights drop again, and we are forced to remember what it’s like to actually see each other.

And maybe that’s what loadshedding left us with. Not just burnt-out routers and flickering bulbs, but a blueprint for something slower, something closer, something more honest.

Because in the silence after the generator, we heard what really matters.

And it wasn’t the hum of electricity. It was the sound of each other.