A culmination of factors, including violent intimidation, is responsible for South Africa seeing some of its worst load shedding on record, says public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan.
Briefing media on Tuesday afternoon (28 June), Gordhan said that Eskom traditionally faces electricity demand of 32,000MW during the winter period.
He said that Eskom is normally capable of delivering 28,000 -30,000MW under normal circumstances, meaning there was already a shortfall facing the power utility. However, he noted that this situation has been further exacerbated by ongoing industrial action which meant that as many as 90% of staff at some power stations could not attend work due to intimidation.
Gordhan said questions must be asked about who stands to benefit from these violent acts and South Africa being plunged into darkness. While Gordhan refused to speculate on who was behind the violence, he noted that the ‘social compact’ had been violated by having forces interfere with vital suppliers such as Eskom.
Specific incidents include:
Some Eskom manager’s homes and powers stations were hit by petrol bombs;
Coal deliveries were dumped on the road;
A senior manager had her vehicle’s tyres slashed.
On a more positive note, Gordhan said a wage agreement had been reached with striking workers on Tuesday, with all workers expected to return to work from Wednesday.
He added that clean-up and recovery work is expected to take place on Wednesday, with maintenance activities also expected to resume. The goal is to avert stage 6 load shedding on Wednesday, depending on the progress that is made.
Depending on the success of these activities, Eskom aims to return to stage 2 load shedding heading into the rest of the week.
As things currently stand, South Africa faces the current load shedding schedule:
Tuesday (28 June)
Stage 6 load shedding from 16h00 to 22h00
Stage 4 load shedding from 22h00 to 00h00
Wednesday (29 June)
Stage 2 load shedding from 00h00 to 05h00
Stage 4 load shedding from 05h00 to 16h00
Stage 6 load shedding from 16h00 to 22h00
