South Africans Face a Bleak Winter Amid Worsening Power Outages

Over the past 15 years South Africa has been experiencing a gradually worsening number of electricity cuts. This state of affairs has prompted frustration among citizens, negative international economic sentiment and financial hardship for many businesses, writes Hartmut Winkler for The Conversation.

High outages have persisted through the warmer early months of 2023, and since early January the country has experienced power cuts every day.

It's widely expected to get worse as electricity consumption peaks in the southern winter months of June and July. And there's a growing fear that the national electricity grid could, at some point, collapse entirely. This would lead to blackouts lasting many days or even weeks.

This comes after Eskom said Stage 6 power cuts - when citizens experience six hours without power - would continue 'indefinitely' following a breakdown at the Koeberg Power Station outside Cape Town, one of the embattled power utility's most reliable plants.