South Africa still in the dark 30 days after Ramaphosa cut short his UK/US trip to address electricity crisis

President Cyril Ramaphosa cut short his state trip to the US and the UK a month ago to address ongoing power cuts, but not much has changed as South Africans woke up to stage 4 load-shedding on Tuesday.

At the time, the presidency said Ramaphosa would not travel to New York as planned after attending Queen Elizabeth’s funeral but would “head home to deal with the current stage 6 load-shedding”. The presidency said he had made the decision to return after “an urgent virtual meeting with all the relevant ministers and officials”.

On September 30, the government intervened and named a new Eskom board with “broad experience, expertise and skills” to provide stability and strategic direction to the entity.

Its new chair Mpho Makwana vowed to divulge plans to resolve the country’s energy crisis after two months, once a proper assessment had been carried out on the root causes and what needs to be done to improve generation capacity.

This was not the first time Ramaphosa had cut short an official state visit to address the power crisis. On December 10 2019, the president cut short his two-day trip to Egypt. At the time Eskom had, for the first time, implemented stage 6 load-shedding.

Political parties have called for some Eskom executives to step down as power cuts persist. On Monday, however, presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said Ramaphosa still had faith in the management and leadership.

“It will not be prudent to single out an individual at this stage, considering and appreciating the complexity of issues at Eskom, as they’ve been outlined multiple times before,” he said.

“The president has confidence that with the appointment of the new board, the executive management team at Eskom will have the necessary support strategically.”

TimesLIVE

Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.