South Africans looking for signs of an end to the latest round of power cuts were left disappointed after the minister responsible for power utility Eskom said he doesn’t have answers yet.
Eskom will implement stage-four load shedding until at least Tuesday as the effects of a tropical cyclone in Mozambique and problems at the company’s power plants continue to put severe pressure on the national power grid.
The response to this week’s unexpected wave of rolling blackouts load shedding – by practically everyone – has been completely unimaginative. Predictably so.
South Africa’s struggling power utility started a third day of power outages, blaming issues including failures at two huge new power stations that are also the main source of the company’s massive debt.
Two new coal-fired power plants being built in South Africa are “badly designed and badly constructed”, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said on Tuesday.
The government is facing potentially unpopular decisions needed to fix state companies. So far, it’s shied away from hard choices.
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan on Thursday announced immediate plans to put an end to the load shedding that has been a daily occurrence countrywide since 29 November.
Bloated by debt, bled by corruption and battered by structurally declining sales, Eskom is facing what’s known in the industry as a “death spiral”.
Eskom is locked into a permanent loss situation and revenue is structurally limited. Expenses have ballooned due to inefficiencies, and electricity tariffs are not cost-reflective.
Former finance minister Pravin Gordhan has directly implicated Jacob Zuma in being part of an orchestrated campaign to loot billions of rand in taxpayer funds during his almost nine-year tenure as president.