‘A national disaster looms in winter’ — continued blackouts met with outrage

15 March 2021 - 09:46 By cebelihle bhengu

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Stage 2 load-shedding has been extended to Wednesday. Stock photo.
Image: 123RF/loganban

The announcement by Eskom to extend planned blackouts to Wednesday has been met with outrage on social media. The power utility said it would continue to implement power cuts due to its “severely constrained generation capacity”.

Eskom said it suffered further breakdowns at five power stations during the weekend.

“Over the past two days, Eskom teams successfully returned a generation unit each at the Matimba and Medupi power stations. However, during the weekend, we suffered further breakdowns at the five power stations, putting further strain on the generation capacity,” it said on Sunday.

#PowerAlert1

Stage 2 loadshedding will be extended to 05:00 on Wednesday following the loss of further
generation capacity and to replenish emergency generation reserves@News24 @SABCNews @NewzroomAfrika @eNCA @IOL @ewnupdates @SundayTimesZA @SowetanLIVE pic.twitter.com/P9xezDoIBG
— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) March 14, 2021

Eskom warned last week that power cuts could be extended beyond Sunday should its capacity remain constrained. It reported breakdowns at the Kriel, Medupi and Kendal power stations.

Here are some of the responses from social media:

Incompetent leadership!!!!! https://t.co/Ad0XfnyPm9
— Nhlanhla Mthombeni (@Nhlanhl_Lwandle) March 14, 2021

Load shedding is killing the youth, I’m the youth.
— Mihlali Ndamase (@mihlalii_n) March 14, 2021

Yall are useless. https://t.co/EmuxbqW57e
— The Psalmist (@PsalmistOfZion) March 14, 2021

Loadshedding sivuka😭
— KK 💝 (@VuyoKeka) March 15, 2021

Woke up to loadshedding 💀
— ♡⁷ (@shiri_twt) March 15, 2021

Starting a fire to warm my food.

Cause these useless people can't provide power on 27°C summer day. https://t.co/EmuxbqW57e
— The Psalmist (@PsalmistOfZion) March 14, 2021

Slept with no electricity, woke up to no electricity. Exercising with light from a candle because I am trying to not let loadshedding mess with my Monday a whole lot. But yerrrr pic.twitter.com/xcWBur6ZIM
— TokisoM (@TokisoM) March 15, 2021