UNLOCKING THE POWER

President Cyril Ramaphosa has warned that load shedding is here to stay, adding that while there is no quick fix for the deliberate power cuts, “real progress is being made”.

“Given the unpredictable performance of Eskom’s fleet of coal-fired power stations, we will not be able to eliminate load shedding in the short term. This is the unfortunate reality of our situation, which has had a long history.”

The president said he knows South Africans are angry about load shedding.

“For every person living in this country, the past two weeks of load shedding have been extremely frustrating and challenging. The widespread public anger is wholly justified. Load shedding is beyond an inconvenience. It has dire consequences for nearly every part of our society from education to public safety to the provision of health services.”

“There is a sense of despair that the situation does not seem to be improving and that there appears to be no end in sight to this crisis,” he said.

Ramaphosa said the immediate term, however, is to reduce the frequency and severity of load shedding by addressing power station breakdowns.

“To address the immediate energy shortfall, Eskom has since July worked on procuring emergency power, and in the last week launched power purchase programmes for 1 000 megawatts of emergency capacity from companies with existing generation capacity and to secure imports from neighbouring countries,” Ramaphosa added.

Ramaphosa said government is giving close attention to the skills, experience and capabilities of the Eskom leadership to ensure that the company has the best people at all levels of the organisation.