The Economist reports on our terrible winters

Winter in Johannesburg
Hard and cold

Jul 8th 2011

SITUATED barely 100 miles (160km) south of the Tropic of Capricorn, you might expect Johannesburg, South Africa's commercial capital, to be bathed in tropical heat all the year round. But this city of 4m inhabitants lies 5,500 feet (1,700 metres) above sea level and it is now mid-winter. So although the middle of the day is generally warm, with clear blue skies and a sun too hot to sit out in comfortably, the nights can be bitterly cold, with temperatures dropping below freezing. But apart from the fancier hotels and some upmarket office blocks, almost no one has central heating—or adequate heating of any form for that matter.

Everyone complains about the cold. During the winter months from May to September, it forms the main topic of Johannesburgers' conversation. Yet no one does anything about it. At night, families, swaddled in overcoats and wrapped in blankets, huddle around what is often the only fire (gas, wood or electric) in their uninsulated drafty homes, where the wafer-thin windows radiate back the outside cold, and the shaded verandas or stoeps (so pleasant in the summer heat) prevent the sun's warming rays from penetrating. The schools are not heated, nor are most restaurants or shops. Offices barely are.
   
Bed, preferably with an electric blanket and piled high with thick duvets, is really the only comfortable place. Getting dressed in the morning is agony. Taking a shower even worse. The uncarpeted wooden or tiled floors (excellent, again, in summer) are freezing under foot. Icy tap water sends darts of pain through newly brushed teeth. Skin dries and cracks painfully in the moistureless air. Coffee gets cold before it can be drunk. Olive oil turns solid in the bottle. Red wine has to be put in the microwave to be palatable. And if that's what it's like for rich folk, imagine how poor black people cope in the townships and shanty-towns.

Earlier this week, in the sprawling black township of Soweto outside Johannesburg, an angry mob, unable to bear the cold any longer, went on the rampage, burning down the homes of two African National Congress councillors and torching their cars in protest over the soaring cost of electricity. They were used to getting their electricity for free, through illegal (and often dangerous) connections to the grid. But then the heavily indebted state-owned power company, Eskom, decided to put an end to this drain on its resources by installing money-gobbling pre-paid meters in houses. No longer able to heat their homes, the impoverished residents turned their wrath on their local councillors who, they said, should have never agreed to the installation of Eskom's little "green boxes".

One might have thought this would serve as a lesson to other public officials dealing with the poor in the misery of Johannesburg's winter. But it seems not. Two days later, as temperatures dropped to –2°C, around 2,000 residents in a decrepit city-centre tenement block were thrown out onto the street, with what meagre belongings they could salvage, after the Johannesburg council deemed their building to be a fire risk. It was up to the landlord, they were told as they stood helplessly in the freezing night air, to find them alternative accommodation. Fat chance. It took an emergency High Court order to get the tenants, who included women and children as well as about 50 blind people, back inside before they all froze to death.

But, hey, at least winters in South Africa are short, Johannesburgers ruefully remind themselves and others.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/07/winter-johannesburg