SA cannot afford load-shedding

South Africans once again find themselves seriously concerned about the ongoing threat of load-shedding as a result of coal shortages, since Eskom has failed to take proper action to ensure sufficient supply of at least 20 days of coal stockpiles at its power stations. On Sunday, the troubled power utility was forced to implement emergency stage one load-shedding amid news that five of its power stations had fewer than 10 days of coal left. While load-shedding is unlikely to take place for the rest of this week, we must be prepared for the prospect that the festive season could bring further outages.

Eskom now also intends to expand its load-shedding schedule to eight stages, allowing for up to 8,000 MW to be shed from the national grid.

The public has been told via spokesperson Dikatso Mothae that the new schedule is “nothing to panic about”, even though load-shedding as we’ve known has only had four stages, allowing for between 1,000 MW and 4000 MW of the national load to be shed.

From where we are sitting it looks as if Eskom itself is panicking – and so it should, for the mess it finds itself in is of its own doing.

The state-owned electricity producer has been plagued by corruption and maladministration for years. Yes, there are signs it is trying to achieve a turnaround, not least through a series of very long-overdue internal investigations, but will it be a case of too little, too late?

Load-shedding is not just inconvenient for citizens, but impacts heavily on businesses.

It is a crisis that goes to the heart of our day-to-day functionality and economic growth potential.

A country which cannot guarantee an uninterrupted power supply does not send a very positive message to investors, current and future players.

We cannot afford to be plunged into darkness again and that is why serious intervention is needed.

Whatever it may be, it must be anchored in the urgent need to safeguard our economy, and ensure functionality and sustainability of power supply, beyond the various political machinations that operate in the country. At the moment it seems Eskom is too engaged in perpetual crisis management to see beyond the smog.