This archive report was first published on 14 December 2019.
South Africa is facing its worst power crisis in recent history, with load-shedding becoming a norm in cities, towns, and rural areas. The national power utility, Eskom, has an installed capacity of over 38,000MW, but has struggled to meet the average demand of 30,000MW, resulting in a shortfall of up to 6,000MW.
President Cyril Ramaphosa had to cut short his visit to Egypt to address the crisis, which has brought mining, manufacturing, and agriculture to a halt. The gold mining industry, in particular, has been severely affected, with sending people three kilometres below the surface becoming unsafe due to the lack of electricity.
The crisis has pushed the country into a recession, with the first bout of outages costing the country $2-3 billion per day. The latest bout has been far worse and has lasted for over a week, affecting every South African, especially during peak periods.
According to Ramaphosa, some of the outages were caused by sabotage, with crucial instruments being deliberately disconnected, resulting in a loss of another 2,000MW to the grid. However, experts say that poor maintenance and ageing power stations are to blame, with sabotage being a likely factor given the opposition to Ramaphosa's planned reforms of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
The opposition is coming from the National Union of Mineworkers and others within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the ruling African National Congress party. They want to maintain jobs at Eskom, South African Airways, and other SOEs at any cost.
While the ANC's radical union allies are dead set against reforming the monopolies, the insolvency of SAA, the debt burden of Eskom, and other SOEs mean job-cutting and some form of private sector investment must take place or these parastatal entities go the dinosaur way.
As the week came to a close, the crisis appeared to be ending, but more units in Eskom's fleet went down, further exacerbating the situation. By February, independent power producers will be feeding around 2,000MW from renewables, mainly wind and solar, into the national grid, which should bring some relief to South Africa's limping power system.
President Ramaphosa is ready to take drastic measures to address the crisis, including cutting jobs and putting the right people in key positions. The power situation is a challenge for the Ramaphosa government in the short-term, but it has also provided him with the perfect excuse to do what almost every expert has said must be done at Eskom and other dysfunctional SOEs.
