SA power grid stable – for now

Eskom said on Friday that it did not anticipate load-shedding for the “most part” of the day after being forced to cut power to parts of the country for two hours on Thursday evening.

The parastatal commenced with stage 1 load-shedding on Thursday just before 6pm‚ citing incidents of “sabotage” at some of its power stations during a one-day strike by employees over wages.

Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said in a tweet before 9am on Friday: “The power system is relatively stable this morning‚ with no load-shedding anticipated for the most part of today. Eskom will continue to provide regular updates about the state of the power system through various media platforms.”

City Power in Johannesburg reported that technicians were dealing with multiple substation outages on Friday that had affected among others parts of Lenasia‚ Mondeor‚ Dunkeld‚ Weltevreden Park.

There was a sense of disbelief when news about the return of load-shedding spread across social media like wildfire on Thursday.

Déjà vu‚ anyone?

A tweet by the Madam & Eve cartoon strip summed up the reaction of many.

Some were aghast at the thought of missing the action in the 2018 World Cup.

Columnist Tom Eaton said the national power grid had been hijacked by disgruntled Eskom employees. 

Ferial Haffajee asked: “Who are Eskom’s real saboteurs? Sure‚ it’s the people messing with sub-stations and stopping coal-stocks. But the big saboteurs are the capturers who broke the institution‚ now sitting in Dubai‚ Saxonwold and one in Nkandla. I hope Judge Zondo’s commission does its work.”