SOUTH AFRICA’S ELECTRICITY CHALLENGES REVEAL WEAK GOVT’ POLICIES
For a leading African nation that is meant to be a shining example to other African nations, it feels so sad that they are struggling to meet the electricity demand of citizens. Over the last 13 years, various administrations in South Africa have promised to solve the electricity challenges plaguing the country. But, the situation keeps getting worse even to the point of load shedding.
According to Eskom, South Africa’s primary electricity supplier, Load shedding, or load reduction, is done countrywide as a controlled option to respond to unplanned events to protect the electricity power system from a total blackout.
While we generally use the word blackout loosely to mean “no lights” in our local area, a country-wide blackout has much more serious consequences, which can occur when there is too much demand and too little supply, bringing the power system into an imbalance – tripping the power system in its entirety.
Many countries and cities in other parts of the world have experienced complete blackouts. To re-start their system, they are able to tap into a power system from a neighbour which can take a few hours or days, but we have to rely on ourselves to start the system from scratch – energising one power plant at a time and one section of the country at a time. It could take up to two weeks to restore full power, which would have a severe impact on our country! This is why we use load shedding, or load reduction, to effectively manage our power system and assist in protecting it from such an event.
President Ramaphosa devoted the lion’s share of his state of the nation address to questions surrounding Eskom, as the country had suffered rolling power cuts at the start of the year. More so, this issue of load shedding has revealed the weaknesses of Ramaphosa’s presidency. Especially, his inability to deliver on a promise no matter how well-meaning his intentions.
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