SOUTH Africa is teetering on the brink of its most severe power cuts yet, just two months after the government announced emergency measures to try and end intermittent outages, prompting President Cyril Ramaphosa to cut short an overseas trip to oversee the response to the crisis.
State power utility Eskom Holdings, which provides the bulk of the nation’s electricity, began cutting 6,000 megawatts from the national grid over the weekend — equivalent to the most on record — to prevent the collapse of the national grid and its executives warned there was a risk the situation could deteriorate further.
The rand weakened to a two-year low against the dollar on Monday, while shares of mining and manufacturing companies slumped.
“The situation will almost definitely get worse,” with no immediate signs of substantial new capacity being added to the grid, said Hilton Trollip, an energy research consultant at the University of Cape Town.
Eskom is struggling to meet electricity demand because its old and poorly maintained power stations continually break
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