Power cuts return to South Africa

South Africa is once again facing widespread power outages, after a brief break over the festive period. These outages, commonly known as load-shedding, are a crucial measure to prevent a complete collapse of the strained electricity grid.

On Tuesday, Eskom, the state-owned power utility, announced the implementation of load-shedding from 5 am to 4 pm, further exacerbating the challenges faced by the country’s power infrastructure. The power cuts are set to escalate from stage two to stage three, meaning that South Africans can expect up to nine blackouts a day, each lasting two hours, or nine occurrences over an eight-day span, with each blackout lasting four hours.

Eskom recently shared a statement on the social media platform X, revealing that load-shedding had been temporarily suspended for 18 days during late December and New Year’s Day. This was the longest uninterrupted period without load-shedding in South Africa since the summer of 2022.

The resumption of power cuts highlights the persisting issues faced by South Africa’s electricity infrastructure and emphasizes the ongoing efforts required to address and stabilize the national power grid.