S. Africans urged to join national day of action against consistent power blackouts

CAPE TOWN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday urged South Africans suffering from a worsening power shortage to join a National day of action against what "is now a National crisis."

The DA said it planned to launch the National day of action on March 29, with the aim of urging the government to take real action when the country is being crippled by consistent power outages.

"We call on South Africans in every community, town and city across the country to join us in a collective protest against what is now a National crisis," the DA said.

As rolling power outages continued, more and more South Africans have vented their anger on social media at the government's failure to fix the power shortage.

Fear among the public has been mounting following messages circulating on social media that South Africa will run out of electricity soon.

But electricity utility Eskom on Wednesday denied the allegation, calling it "false and misleading."

"Messages being circulated via social and digital media indicating that there will not be electricity in South Africa are false and misleading," the utility said.

For the past week, South Africa has been hit hard by continued rolling blackouts. As power outages become more frequent, President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to prepare for tougher times in days to come.

Load shedding has turned from bad to worse since Saturday after tropical cyclone Idai struck Mozambique.

South Africa is so dependent on electricity imports from neighboring states that a loss of 1,100 megawatts (MW) from Mozambique forced Eskom to implement stage 4 load shedding, which allows for up to 4000 MW of the National load to be discarded.

Stage 4 is the most severe load shedding that was first implemented in February and now has been in effect for the past five consecutive days.

There have been reports that Eskom is preparing stage 5 and 6 load shedding, which means that the utility will shed 5,000 MW and 6,000 MW respectively. This is an indication that the National grid is on the brink of collapse.

South Africa has never experienced higher than stage 4 load shedding.

Eskom has denied that it would implement stage 5 and 6 load shedding but has acknowledged that there is a race against time to ensure that a National blackout and grid collapse do not occur.

"Load shedding is controlled and managed on a rotational basis for a period of between two or four hours at a time, depending on the schedule that the customer is on, on a particular day," said the state-run parastatal, which provides about 95 percent of the electricity consumed in South Africa.

It must be noted that load shedding is implemented as a last resort measure to protect the National electricity system, Eskom said.

"We will continue to provide regular updates about the state of the power system through various media and through the official Eskom social media platforms," it said.

On Wednesday, hundreds of people gathered at outside Eskom headquarters in Johannesburg, demanding an end to load shedding and protesting against the government's failure to provide this basic service to the nation.

It is a complete failure of governance that has brought the country to the brink of collapse, with nationwide electricity blackouts becoming the new normal, DA leader Mumsi Maimane said.

"As South Africans, we must take a collective stand before it is too late," he said.

The DA, he said, will mobilize the nation to pressure the government to take the action required to fix this National crisis.

"South Africa needs this change, and we need it now. And I urge every citizen who loves this country to join this National day of action so that we can usher in change and save our nation from the brink of collapse," said Maimane.

Maimane reiterated the DA's call to privatize Eskom and allow a diverse range of energy to enter the grid, thus increasing competition and lowering costs.

Ramaphosa has ruled out the possibility of privatizing Eskom that has long been hampered by alleged corruption and poor management.

Eskom is facing debts amounting to 420 billion rand (about 30 billion U.S. dollars). The utility has urgently appealed to the government to help it repay the debt so as to prevent it from bankruptcy.

Eskom has been accused of using load shedding to blackmail the government, but the utility has denied the allegation, saying the recent load shedding was caused by the breakdown of several power stations.

Previous attempts by the government to bail out embattled Eskom have failed.

On Wednesday, Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni confirmed in a letter to the DA that the National Treasury does not know how big the new proposed bailout to Eskom will be.

In his budget speech last month, the minister said that the government will bail out Eskom with 23 billion rand (about 160 million dollars) yearly over the next three years.

However, this bailout is now likely to increase given Eskom's current situation, Mboweni said.