THE most severe blackouts in South Africa’s history have left the government struggling for ways to mitigate their impact on businesses and livelihoods, with efforts to buy more power from private producers and neighboring countries.
Africa’s most industrialised nation is facing more than four hours of electricity cuts at a stretch because state-owned utility Eskom can’t produce enough power from its old and poorly maintained plants to meet demand.
Although the country has faced rolling blackouts since 2008, a succession of action plans have failed to provide lasting solutions. The government’s latest pledge to intervene comes after 6 000 megawatts of capacity was cut from the national grid over the weekend as power stations malfunctioned.
The crisis is hammering an economy that’s been struggling to rebound from the pandemic and rebuild battered business confidence. The duration and frequency of the outages don’t allow for batteries used as backups to be
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