Protesting residents from Ivory Park and Ekurhuleni say the country’s electricity problems are a poor reflection on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s leadership.
The group of residents demonstrated outside the utility’s Megawatt Park offices in Sunninghill on Friday where they called for the resignation of Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter, and the entire board.
March organisers said this was the beginning of nationwide demonstrations to force Eskom’s leadership to deliver on its core mandate.
March organisers said they would mobilise all communities around the country experiencing Eskom-related problems, threatening to stage weekly protests.
NO LOADSHEDDING FOR NOW
Meanwhile, Eskom was optimistic it wouldn’t need to switch off our power this week but 2021 was on course to surpass last year’s load shedding record.
The country suffered 47 days of rolling power cuts during the 2020–2021 financial year and this year is set to be far worse.
The utility suspended load shedding on Friday morning after a week of consecutive power cuts that peaked at stage 4.
In the past three weeks, South Africans have spent 15 days experiencing load shedding working around load shedding rosters, navigating through traffic jams and dealing with the financial losses due to the rolling power cuts.
For November so far, there have only been two days without load shedding.
There is now hope of no power cuts for next week if the system holds up.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said: “We assure you that our power station managers are working very hard to bring back those networks that are back.”
De Ruyter said while they were doing everything possible to avoid more load shedding for this weekend and the week ahead certain problems remain.
By Masechaba Sefularo for EWN
