ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday he is confident that the rolling blackouts experienced by Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd will be resolved by this weekend.
Addressing journalists during his party’s campaign trail in Thokoza township, east of Johannesburg, Ramaphosa expressed sympathy to millions of South Africans who were faced with load shedding, particularly businesses that have been hardest hit by the power cuts since the past few days.
Eskom said it implemented Stage 4 load-shedding after it lost a large part of its generating capacity.
The power utility has since announced that the country will be moving to stage three from 9pm tonight, reduced to stage two from 5am Saturday.
The power cuts come at a time when matric pupils are writing their 2021 final exams.
Load shedding also comes at a time when the country is preparing to go to the polls on November 1 for the local government elections.
“We are all concerned and also a bit upset. Others are and others are very angry. This is the time for us to work together to solve this problem. It’s not, right now, the time for incrimination. It is for me a time to get people to buckle down and do their work,” Ramaphosa told the journalists during an election campaign in Ekurhuleni.
“I don’t believe, for me, that this was intentional. The breakage of machines is not intentional – there could be some negligence, there could be some oversight that did not happen but it is not intentional. It so happens that it happens at a critical time of our country.”
Government, political parties and experts has also applied pressure on the power utility to ramp up its efforts to secure generation capacity in the coming days.
There are also growing calls for heads to roll, including calls for Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Pravin Gordhan to be axed over the utility’s continuous failures.
On Wednesday, the governing party said Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyetr and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan must explain the latest bout of rolling blackouts.
ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte says the governing party will demand answers from de Ruyter and Gordhan.
“You cannot do something like that and not give us a reason why. You also have to think, as a society, that we have lives to live and businesses to run and children to feed,” said Duarte.
“So it’s unacceptable, so our people need a proper answer from Meneer de Ruyter as well as the minister.”
addressing public meeting in Phola Park.
Eskom accelerated to stage 4 on Wednesday afternoon.
The power utility is citing a total generation loss of 14 957 MW as the reason for the intense power cuts.
The company has, however, assured South Africans that load shedding will come to an end by the start of next week.
On Thursday, DA leader John Steenhuisen blamed the ANC for the stage 4 load shedding dramatically introduced by Eskom.
“When you appoint corrupt, useless cadres, you get power blackouts, you get job-shedding, you get water-shedding. When you appoint capable people, you get things done. If the DA has the most seats, we will govern,” said Steenhuisen during his campaign trail in Eldorado Park.
“During five years of DA-run government, you can expect to see and experience steady improvements to service delivery as we implement our winning formula, which is to appoint people based on merit, and spend public money on the public.”
- Inside Politics
