As South Africans demand answers, Ramaphosa convenes a special meeting on load shedding

President Cyril Ramaphosa will convene a special meeting of the President’s Coordinating Council (PCC) on Friday to address South Africa’s ongoing energy crisis.

Since the beginning of the year, the country has been subjected to nonstop load shedding, with rolling blackouts reaching level 6 for over a week. Load shedding is currently alternating between stages 4 and 5 during the day and evenings.

Eskom was scheduled to present a state-of-the-system statement earlier in the week, but this was cancelled due to executives being summoned into urgent meetings with the government. Since then, there has been no update.

South Africa’s National Energy Crisis Committee, which is overseen by Ramaphosa’s office, stated that a variety of actions have been taken to alleviate the energy crisis, including new legislation to expedite the licencing and building of power plants, but no specifics or deadlines have been provided.

Pravin Gordhan, Minister of Public Enterprises, stated that Eskom was finalising preparations to take more urgent actions to stabilise the power station’s performance and dependability, but gave no specifics or timetables.

Meanwhile, anger has grown across all sectors of society as houses, companies, and entire industries have been kept in the dark for up to 12 hours a day.

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde demanded on Thursday that Ramaphosa explain what he was doing to address the crisis.

“Given the catastrophic impact this crisis has had on the economy and that it infringes on the fundamental rights of our citizens, we desperately need a tangible national plan that delivers urgent action,” he said

“All South Africans want to see this crisis resolved. Myself and my government are ready to work with all spheres of government, the private sector, and civil society to support national government in acting with urgency for all of us.”

Winde has vowed to call an international meeting to discuss load shedding.

“We must see urgency emerge from this PCC, which has been sorely lacking for too long, while citizens are left feeling abandoned and hopeless. It is inexcusable that when facing a crisis of this magnitude, we are left with morsels and rumours, but nothing concrete.”

Winde projected that load shedding cost the province R8.2 billion in real GDP. The economic harm is projected to expand dramatically not only in the Western Cape, but throughout the country unless clear and immediate national actions are adopted, he warned.

The public enterprises oversight committee told EWN that the present high levels of load shedding are unjustifiable and that Eskom must do something to reduce load shedding to at least stage 1 or stage 2.

The committee also wants Eskom to provide a full briefing on what’s going on and what it plans to do about it.

Meanwhile, Eskom is facing legal action from political parties and numerous industries in response to the harm caused by repeated outages. Mmusi Maimane, the leader of Build On South Africa, has become the latest person to file a lawsuit against the national electricity provider and the government over load shedding.