Unplanned outage: SA faces ‘de facto’ blackout

Eskom’s plan to revive the grid after a collapse has come under increased scrutiny, raising the question of what the government will do in what the utility calls the unlikely event of a national blackout.

Eskom has allayed fears of a total blackout — which in the three to four weeks it takes to restore power would wipe out the economy and plunge South Africa into social collapse — with the utility’s spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha calling this scenario “highly unlikely”. 

Meanwhile, the country is inching towards stage eight rolling power cuts, beyond which households could experience load-shedding for more than half of the day. Even higher stages of load-shedding would constitute a de facto blackout.