South Africa battles electricity crisis, unprecedented nationwide blackouts

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa h an urgent meeting scheduled with his Cabinet on Wednesday to discuss country’s electricity crisis, which has led to unprecedented levels of nationwide power blackouts in Africa's most developed economy. troubled state-owned power utility Eskom, which produces about 95% of country’s electricity, is implementing scheduled, rolling blackouts in an attempt to save electricity while struggling to keep its ageing and poorly maintained coal-fired power stations operational.

Ramaphosa returned home to chair meeting with his ministers after attending funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London. He cancelled his trip to New York to attend United Nations General Assembly. Eskom h started implementing Stage 6 power cuts, a level that means businesses and homes go without electricity for more than 10 hours a day. company has since reduced level to Stage 5, which requires South Africans to go without power for up to eight hours a day. blackouts are also affecting or government services, including water supplies in some areas as electric-powered pumps grind to a halt.

With South Africa's economy alrey struggling to rebound from COVID-19 pandemic, economists have given stark warnings on effect of blackouts,. power cuts, referred to by Eskom as lo-shedding, started earlier in year to a less-drastic degree and were a crucial contributor to economy contracting by 0.7% in second quarter, according to official South African statistics agency StatsSA.

Eskom sometimes gives just a few hours notice of blackouts. “It is very difficult to understand what will happen next," Jannie Rossouw, an economist at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, said. "Will lo-shedding stages decline over time going forward, will we go back to Stage 6, or might we even move beyond Stage 6 in months to come?”

“It is really just about impossible for general public and businesses in South Africa to plan if Eskom cannot plan its capacity," Rossouw said.

Just about every economic sector has been hurt, and South Africa’s biggest telecommunication companies this week warned that continuous blackouts may start affecting ir services. MTN South Africa chief technology and information officer, Michele Gamberini, said it was currently using upgred power back-up batteries to keep its cellphone towers operating but tht prolonged blackouts could le to loss of services.

“Despite us having placed thousands of batteries at our sites across country, efficacy of those batteries greatly reduces once we pass Stage 4 lo-shedding,” Gamberini said.

company has also rolled out more than 2,000 diesel-powered generators to its sites to counter prolonged blackouts, it said. Eskom is in a race against time to procure ditional capacity from renewable energy sources like wind and solar through independent power producers. It has announced a program to urgently procure at least 1,000 megawatts of electricity from private sector to ease burden of blackouts.

Ramaphosa faces pressure from opposition parties that called on him to fire ministers responsible for state-owned enterprises and energy sector. His government defended itself by saying it took over a dysfunctional Eskom, which was at heart of allegations of massive government corruption under former President Jacob Zuma.

“We really regret way in which our energy provision that is coming from Eskom is upsetting both our households and economy," Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Newzroom Afrika news channel. “But this is Eskom we inherited, this is Eskom we’re trying to fix very hard.” re are alrey moves by Ramaphosa's rivals to oust him as leer of ruling African National Congress at party’s elective conference in December.