Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa at a media briefing. Photographer: Henk Kruger / Independent Newspapers
South Africans' weekend was interrupted with the gloomy news of the return of load shedding.
This came after the country’s state-owned power utility, Eskom, implemented rolling blackouts on Saturday afternoon with stage 3 load shedding.
By the time South Africans woke up on Sunday, they realised that Eskom had ramped up load shedding to stage 6 in the early hours of the morning.
On Sunday, the Minister of Energy and Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa apologised to South Africans during a media briefing on Eskom’s energy generation status.
He said, “Please accept our sincerest apologies. With the greatest level of humility, I want to say to the country that we regret that there is a setback.”
"We suffered a setback on February 1, 2025, after over 300 days of consecutive supply of electricity and in uninterrupted fashion and again now. We are coming back to you while we have another bout of load shedding which has a greater intensity," the minister added.
Ramokgopa said the load shedding was due to five generation units being lost at Majuba power station, Eskom's second-largest power plant.
"This resulted in us initiating Stage 3 load shedding to allow us to replenish the reserves, to allow the team to understand what the root cause was at Majuba, and have an appreciation of how long it will take for us to return those units. At about 01:30 am at Camden, we lost four units, which is another outlier. The constellation of that resulted in us upping the levels of load shedding to Stage 6. We have been able to record some successes in return of the units," he said.
While many in the country speculated that the latest bout of load shedding was due to sabotage, the minister was quick to squash these claims.
Ramokgopa said, "I have heard several queries regarding some underhand activities. I want to say to the rest of the country; that this is a technical issue. We must not find any reason to manufacture explanations of why we are at Stage 6. We are hoping to get back to normal by the end of the week. There is no sabotage."
“On the agitation, anger, disappointment that the country is registering, we should not accept load shedding at any Stage...We have made decisions that are in the interest of the great...We understand the anger; we feel your pain; we can hear your cries. We will resolve this problem," Ramokgopa further added.
Energy stability in South Africa was fragile over the past few years, with high and frequent levels of load shedding taking its toll on the economy.
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