Home FOREIGN Electricity Crisis Rocks South Africa, Forces Ramphosa To Cancel Foreign Trip

Electricity Crisis Rocks South Africa, Forces Ramphosa To Cancel Foreign Trip

South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa

Electricity crisis is now threatening the peace of South Africa, leading to President Cyril Ramaphosa cancelling an official visit to Egypt.
Information reaching us indicated that for the past six days – and intermittently over the past decade – Eskom, the nation’s electricity generation company, has enforced “load-shedding,” whereby power is cut for anything from two to four hours at a time in a bid to relieve pressure on the national grid.
According to the information, roads become gridlocked because traffic lights don’t function even as businesses closed and shopping centres are left in the dark and mines have to halt operations.
The president has come under increasing criticism after Eskom enforced scheduled power cuts that have thrown the country into disarray and pose a threat to the economy.
John Steenhuisen, leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), led a picket outside Eskom headquarters in Johannesburg today, December 10, saying the “rolling blackouts” threaten to “throw the country’s economy over a precipice.”
Steenhuisen called on President Ramaphosa to leave the “ruins of a bygone era” in Cairo and attend to his own relic of the past – the power utility.
Indeed, Eskom’s problems were already apparent in 2008 when then president Thabo Mbeki admitted that the government had failed to make provisions for increased generating capacity.
Since then, ageing power stations have not been maintained, and two new power stations, which have severely overrun their budgets, are still not operational.

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