The Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, has rejected claims that loadshedding has been suspended until further notice because of the looming May 29 general elections.
According to Ramokgopa, Eskom has had 40 consecutive days of no loadshedding due to the power utility’s planned maintenance efforts.
He said the reality of no loadshedding for 40 consecutive days can be attributed to ongoing and sustained improvements in generation performance.
The minister hopes that power cuts could remain suspended for more than a year.
Energy action plan implementation
He was speaking on Monday in Hatfield, Pretoria, during a media briefing on the implementation and progress of the national energy action plan.
According to Ramakgopa: “We are moving forward with the implementation of the national energy action plan that President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled in July 2022.
“I am making this point because, as you can imagine, we are in a silly season.
“There are going to be extrapolations and interpretations of what is before us, that there is a correlation between Eskom’s improvement and the elections.
“When I was appointed electricity minister, I entered into a pact with South Africans that they would receive weekly and biweekly updates. There is no correlation between Eskom’s performance and the date of May 29.”
Workers praised for their commitment
Ramokgopa explained further: “When our teams made efforts such as planned maintenance in December 2023 and January, little did we know that there would be a big date with the ballots for May 29. This [Eskom performance] is not staged or managed.
“This is an orchestrated effort and engineering feat. We plan to ensure that loadshedding remains suspended for three months, six months, and a year.”
On Sunday, Eskom expressed gratitude to its employees for their “commitment, and special appreciation goes to the power station general managers and their teams who are working diligently to ensure the recovery of additional generating capacity by bringing units from unplanned outages and planned maintenance back into service as soon as possible”.
Eskom said a total of 2 600 megawatts is expected to be returned to service by midnight on Monday.
