Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan says measures are being put in place to reduce the country’s power cuts to Level 2 by the weekend.
Gordhan says the initial blackouts were caused by the breakdown of a number of Eskom’s units as well as delays caused by incomplete maintenance work.
“Overnight, some 2,000 MegaWatts of power will be returned to operations and as a result, it is expected that the system will be downgraded from a Level 4 load-shedding to Level 3 load-shedding,” he said.
“Then over tomorrow [Thursday] and Friday a few more thousand units will be put back on to the system as a result of plants returning to operations and that will result in a downgrade from Level 3 to Level 2.”
Gordhan said he was told by Eskom management that load-shedding will stop over the weekend.
“Which means as South Africans go to the polls on Monday and as the counting of votes proceeds on Monday evening and the next few days, there will be no load-shedding unless there is unexpected event which I’m assured by the board and Eskom management is an unlikely event.”