A monkey was on Monday electrocuted at the Victoria Falls Power Station in Livingstone, causing a blackout and delaying Vice-President Dr Guy Scott’s schedule at the Zambezi Sun Hotel for two hours.
According to a Zesco engineer who preferred anonymity, as he was not permitted to talk to the media, the monkey jumped onto a step-down transformer and sat on naked live wires, tripping safety power mechanisms in the process, and it died instantly.
“It was a monkey that led to the entire city being blacked out after it went and sat on our step-down transformers. We received several calls from Sun Hotel in the aftermath of the monkey being electrocuted… that their standby power generator had also failed to kick in and wanted our help to restore power as Dr Guy Scott could not open the judges’ conference in darkness,” the engineer said.
At the hotel, panic gripped management as its general manager, Joanne Selby, was seen frantically pacing up and down at the Zambezi Sun Hotel, where the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association (CMJA) meeting was due to be opened by Vice-President Scott.
The power failure led to delegates taking time to enjoy traditional dances provided by the national dance troupe and Tujatane Primary School.
And after power was restored, Vice-President Scott joked that Zambia had a popular image of being rather a ramshackle, rundown place and that he was going to say how false that was until power went off.
“Unfortunately, you have caught me on a matter of fact and I have to back that off,” joked Vice-President Scott.