When Eskom plonked Stage Six on us the other day, you could almost feel the country draw its collective breath.
Two things became clear – it’s going to get worse before it gets better (Stage Eight, anyone?), and the age of Ramaphoria has lost much of its shine.
If you believe the president, that may be due to an act of sabotage, with the recent critical worsening of load shedding down to nefarious means.
Below via Fin24:
The president said that while a number of factors contributed to recent rotational power cuts, including heavy rains, unplanned outages and the age of power stations, about 2 000MW of power was also lost due to an act of sabotage.
“What has also come out as a great concern is that there has been a measure of sabotage, sabotage that has lead to the loss – during this period – of 2 000MW, where someone in the Eskom system disconnected one of the instruments that finally lead to one of the boilers tripping, and us losing as much as 2 000MW”.
Ramaphosa said the act of sabotage is being investigated, and Eskom must work with the police and intelligence services to find out what happened.
Sounds like a good step, but can we also start holding those who have spent the best part of a decade tearing Eskom apart from the inside accountable?
12 years of load shedding, and not a single person behind bars.
Back to Ramaphosa, this recent sabotage, and a dash of good news:
“[The sabotage] came at a time when we were having all these problems and just added to the many other probelms. On its own, it would not have really sunk the system,” he said. He later said the sabotage lead to the loss of 2 000MW over 10 hours.
He added that from December 17 to January 13 there would likely not be load shedding. “All leave is cancelled. No one goes on leave,” he said.
Sorry for the employees, but great that we may be able to turn on the Christmas lights on the tree.
Eskom head of Generation Bheki Nxumalo said that load shedding would cease over this period due to serviced units returning to duty.
Let’s just hope there isn’t another act of sabotage around the corner.
As things stand, load shedding Stage Two is due to continue through until 11PM tonight.
[source:fin24]
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