‘She has to walk at night in the dark, fearing for her life’: South Africans 'fed up with load-shedding'

Nine-and-half hours of power outages — implemented in staggered periods — in a 24-hour cycle have become a headache for most South Africans as Eskom implements stage 6 load-shedding.

On Sunday, the power utility announced it would implement stage 6 continuously until further notice.

“Since Sunday afternoon a generating unit each at Arnot, Hendrina, Lethabo and Majuba, as well as two units at Camden Power Station, have suffered breakdowns and were taken offline for repairs.

“Two generating units at the Lethabo Power Station were shut down due to coal constraints as the New Vaal Mine that is supplying the station has been unable to deliver the expected amount of coal during the past week because of the heavy rains,” Eskom said in a statement.

Giving an update in a media briefing on Monday, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter said coal supply shortages contributed to the high levels of load-shedding

“We have no option but to implement load-shedding stage 6. We face a constraint situation, we appeal to the public to use electricity sparingly.”

De Ruyter said stage 6 would be implemented until Wednesday and by Thursday power supply should improve.

“By Thursday we will be able to start phasing down to load-shedding stage 4 with stage 3 reached by the weekend.”

He added that should the utility not implement load-shedding this would lead to a “collapse” of the grid.

“Load-shedding is the lever we use to protect the system from a total blackout.”

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana will take to the podium in parliament on Wednesday afternoon to deliver the budget speech.

Money to be allocated to address the energy crisis will be one of the items on his list to address, after President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this month declared a state of disaster.

This week, residents voiced their frustrations on social media under the hashtag #FedupWithLoadshedding, sharing their experiences on living in the dark for hours.