Eskom is working hard to ensure that South Africa will not have to face load shedding beyond the end of this week.

This is according to senior generation official, Andrew Etzinger, who was speaking to Reuters on Tuesday (12 February).

Etzinger added that at this stage Eskom does not suspect sabotage is the cause of unplanned outages at some of its power stations.

On Sunday Eskom announced that it would be reinstituting load shedding as the power utility due to a number of ‘system breakdowns’.

This culminated in stage 4 load shedding on Monday, with many South Africans left in the dark for hours at a time.

Surprise

While the country faced load shedding at the end of 2018, the latest round has come as a shock – even for president Cyril Ramaphosa.

Speaking on the power outages, Ramaphosa said that he was ‘shocked’ and ‘angered’ that the power utility has reached this stage of dysfunctionality.

He added that Eskom was a risk that needed to be addressed.

“We have got all our energy eggs in one basket,” he said.

“When the generator of energy in our country reports that there are six units (down), it means that all six eggs are broken.”

Read: Ramaphosa ‘shocked and angry’ over Eskom power cuts as its board explains the move to stage 4 load shedding