Calling all South Africans: be sparing with electrical appliances after 4pm, think twice about whether you really need to boil so much water for that tea, and don’t even think about switching on your air conditioner after dark.

These were among the pleas Eskom’s outgoing CEO made to long-suffering consumers on Sunday, as he reassured them recent maintenance work would ease some of the harshest blackouts in living memory.

But outgoing CEO André De Ruyter also reaffirmed that power cuts would continue for two more years at least.

Earlier this month, households were without electricity for at least six hours a day, sometimes as much as 10 hours, with freezers thawing and businesses forced to crank up diesel generators.

South Africans were braced for worse, with the risk of stage-8 load shedding — more than half a day with no power.

“That possibility is receding, which is comforting and positive,” De Ruyter told a virtual news conference on Sunday. The current schedule was for lower stages of outages that are roughly equal to less than four hours a day.

But he added that there was always an “inherent risk” it could get worse if further outages happen during peak demand.

‘Small steps’

“We would really urge South Africans to plan [evening] consumption such that … we have reduced demand,” he said. “Switch off air conditioners, only boil water that you need — don’t fill the kettle up. These small steps will really make a difference.”

Creaking coal-fired power stations, corruption in coal supply contracts, criminal sabotage and failure to ease up regulation to enable private providers to swiftly bring renewable energy on tap have all left South Africa in a deep power deficit.

Voters could well punish the ANC in next year’s general election.

Read: Continuous load shedding for the next two years: Eskom

Eskom chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer said that by the end of March the firm should be able to bring 1 862MW back online, and that it would focus on keeping its top six power stations running smoothly.