Power outages are the cause of any darkness at the Mfusis. The five-person South African family must now go into battery-operated lamps and candle mode due to the power outage.
The state-owned utility is carrying out planned blackouts. and occasionally only gives a few hours’ warning. For those who live in Soweto, life has grown hectic.
Duduzile Mfusi, a mother of three, adds, “We would come back from school, work, and then just, you know, catch up as a family, do…prepare supper, help with homework.
“However, I now have to move quickly. Your homework and making sure everyone eats promptly before it becomes dark out come first. We therefore make an effort to at least ensure that by the time load shedding (power outage) hits, everything is done”, she adds.
The Mfusis invested in a generator when power outages only laster for an hour or two during stage one earlier this year. However, running the generator has become too costly.
“Not having electricity for a period of about 4 hours to 6 hours in a day, it’s extremely costly because the generator, also, it’s not it’s not effective for us in terms of finances”, Nhlanhla Mfusi, the father, laments.
“It’s extremely expensive because now you’re buying petrol for the generator, you’re buying petrol for your car because we have to transport the kids back and forth, back and forth. So we can’t afford the generator anymore.”
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The public power utility, Eskom, produces 95% of the country’s electricity but struggles to to keep its ageing and poorly maintained coal-fired power stations operational.
As matter of consequence, supply street furniture like traffic lights, public services including water supply, businesses and households are going without electricity for up to eight hours a day.
To all of them, Eskom asks to use electricity sparingly in order to help prevent nationwide blackouts.
Bad strategy
Economist Jannie Rossouw, thinks the startegy isn’t the good one: “Eskom treats its consumers as if they are the enemies. The sense is as if Eskom is shouting at people: ‘You use too much electricity, you’re in the wrong.'”
“Eskom should again establish its credibility in civil society with the general public so that civil society and the general public can help support Eskom in its engagement with government to help Eskom overcome the limitations on electricity supply that government has put on Eskom”, the economist concludes.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa this week cancelled his trip to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly and returned home after the funeral of the Queen Elizabeth II to chair a meeting with his ministers.
According to the official national statistics agency StatsSA, power cuts -referred to by Eskom as loadshedding- were a crucial contributor to the economy contracting by 0.7% in the second quarter of 2022.
Indeed, just about every sector is hurt, and South Africa’s biggest telecommunication companies this week warned that continuous blackouts may start affecting their services.
In July, Cyril Ramaphosa announced energy reforms, urging South Africans to “join in a massive rollout of rooftop solar” and sell excess to the grid.
He then announced the government, would use climate funding provided through the Just Energy Transition Partnership to invest in the grid and repurpose power stations that have reached the end of their lives.
Last year, the South African authorities raised the licensing threshold for new embedded generation projects from 1 MW to 100 MW.
