South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has cut short overseas visits due to a further worsening of the country’s power crisis, warned on Monday not to count on any “short-term” improvement.
“Given the uncertain performance of (state-owned) Eskom’s fleet of coal-fired power plants, we will not be able to end load shedding in the short term. This is the sad reality of a long-standing situation,” he wrote in his weekly letter to the nation.
After several weeks of intense load shedding between June and July, in the middle of the southern winter, Africa’s leading industrial power is plagued by new drastic power cuts, as the national grid is unable to produce enough energy after years of mismanagement and corruption.
This implies, for individuals as well as for companies, several cuts, of several hours, every day, for almost two weeks now. This system of load shedding has been in place for about 15 years.
While traveling in the United States and London, Mr. Ramaphosa announced an early return last week to address the crisis.
“These last two weeks of load shedding have been extremely frustrating and difficult. The public’s anger is justified,” he said, adding that the power shortage is “jeopardizing” the economy.
“In the immediate future, our goal is to reduce the frequency and severity of load shedding by addressing outages at the plants,” he continued.
The rise in temperatures with the arrival of spring usually leads to a drop in consumption and reduces the pressure on aging and poorly maintained plants.
But a high number of breakdowns has led to a dramatic drop in production, which is also suffering from coal supply problems. South Africa gets 80% of its electricity from coal, creating serious pollution, which is denounced by environmentalists.
Calling on South Africans to “use electricity sparingly,” the president assured that measures to create new generation capacity are progressing “even if the effects are not immediately felt.
Cyril Ramaphosa announced in July that the sector would be opened up to the private sector. The country, which secured 7.7 billion euros for its energy transition at COP26, signed the first agreements for wind power production last week.
