‘One day we'll wake up & the grid will be down’: SA reacts to Eskom 'silently unleashing stage 8' load-shedding

Frustrations with the country’s power supply shortages seem to grow by the day, made worse by reports that Eskom silently implemented stage 8 load-shedding recently.  

Sunday Times reported that last Thursday, the power utility implemented stage 8 load-shedding despite saying this was stage 6. Eskom shed 7,072MW, which landed it in the stage 8 threshold of 7,001MW to 8,000MW. 

Eskom, however, denied implementing stage 8 and said it was able to reduce some of the power (1,353MW) through load-reduction and, based on this technicality, it said it was still within stage 6 criteria.  

South Africans, including some energy experts, were not convinced by Eskom's explanation. Ordinary citizens took to social media to voice their frustrations about the worsening load-shedding, with some even suggesting that Eskom did not announce stage 8 load-shedding to protect minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.  

Earlier this month, Ramokgopa had made projections that SA would less likely cut power beyond stage 6 though the grid was under strain.   

Eskom implemented higher stages of load-shedding from last week Wednesday, and  continues with stage 6 this week. On Sunday, it announced that it would continue implementing stage 6 due to a shortage of generation capacity.

MP Bantu Holomisa told TimesLIVE the government was “clueless” on how to address the energy crisis.

“The truth is that this government has no idea how to deal with this electricity crisis. They misled the public earlier to say that this new minister [Ramokgopa] would switch things up, but that is hogwash.” 

Holomisa said none of the government’s plans thus far to address the generation shortage had been fruitful.

“Appointing the minister, committees and even declaring the state of disaster has not helped us, people are still struggling despite these measures. The government has even failed to tell us the real cause of load-shedding, these people are just lying. One day we will wake up and the grid will be down.” 

This is how others reacted on social media: 

TimesLIVE

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