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South Africa is once again hit by drastic power cuts. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was to go to the United Nations General Assembly in New York after attending the funeral of Elizabeth II, has brought forward his return to South Africa following the announcement of new power cuts.
On a scale of eight intensity levels, level 6 was again reached, with outages ranging from ten to twelve hours a day in Johannesburg, and this in the middle of the southern winter.
The CEO of Eskom, the public company that supplies 90% of the country’s electricity, apologized for these new power cuts after yet another damage to a power plant. This announcement is not the first far from it and the country is familiar with these power cuts, but their frequency has intensified, level 6 has already been reached twice in June 2022 and in December 2019.
These cuts are due to poorly maintained and aging coal-fired power stations since most of them are around forty years old, and breakdowns are legion. In just seven days, Eskom had to deal with more than forty damage to its sites, which forced the company to reduce its production capacity by 50%.
South Africa is however the first industrial power of the continent, the country has nearly 60 million inhabitants but it is today unable to meet the energy demands of households and businesses.
Economic growth directly impacted by the energy crisis
For years, the public company Eskom has been crippled with debt, due to mismanagement and massive corruption, to which must be added social disputes over wages at several sites. And the losses linked to the current load shedding have been assessed at 40 million euros per day.
For their part, companies must equip themselves with electricity generators to no longer depend on the public supplier and to be able to continue to operate normally. But this has a cost, which discourages business creation in the country. A situation that also worries foreign investors and threatens to derail efforts to revive the economy.
Eskom is also the biggest polluter in the country, which depends 80% on coal for its electricity. The State is a signatory to the Paris agreements and has been summoned to act, the justice recognized last March a violation of the constitutional right to breathe healthy air. To respond to this emergency, the Eskom company called on South African individuals and companies to be sober, taking Europe as an example
Eskom’s chairman urged residents to turn off lights in offices at night and avoid running swimming pool pumps and water heaters during peak hours. This announcement was greeted with consternation by South Africans, who are in a precarious situation, unemployment has reached 34.5% in the country due in particular to the Covid-19 pandemic and South Africa is not spared from soaring prices, especially gasoline.
Decline of state services
The impact of power outages is especially felt in the townships, these poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities, where it sometimes takes months before power is restored; and angry demonstrations erupt regularly against the decay of public services.
On the side of the South African government, on July 25, President Ramaphosa announced measures to deal with the energy crisis which, according to him, would put an end to load shedding.
But the return of these power cuts does not bode well for South Africa: the rating agencies’ outlook is not optimistic for the coming months and inflation is weighing heavily, it has reached a new record. 7.8% over one year in July, its highest level for 13 years.
An economy already heavily marked after two years of pandemic and which was just beginning to recover, today the recession hovers again with a GDP down 0.7% in the second quarter.