South Africa ends national state of disaster on electricity

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa has ended the national state of disaster due to the lack of electricity, which was first imposed in February, with immediate effect, Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Thembi Nkadimeng announced.

The government's decision to terminate the national state of disaster is motivated by the fact that a number of measures are being taken to achieve the objective of relieving the impact of the severe energy constraints on the economy and society, Nkadimeng said at a media briefing.

The goal of declaring the national state of disaster at that time was to make sure that quick actions will be taken to lessen the effects of load shedding on sensitive industries like the health sector and small companies, Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister as saying.

Since February, the government has implemented extensive regulations that outline the duties of various state organs to lessen the effects of extreme load shedding and stop the worsening of power supply shortages, she said.

South Africans have endured power cuts for years but 2022 was the worst on record with 205 days of rolling blackouts, as aging coal-fired power plants broke down and state-owned power utility Eskom struggled to find the money to buy diesel for emergency generators.

The situation worsened in January this year when Eskom said it would implement more cuts because of breakdowns at 11 coal-fired generating units.

Loadshedding was escalated to level 6, which entails removing 6,000 megawatts (MW) worth of power from the grid in order to rebalance demand and supply. This resulted in outages lasting 4.5 hours at a time and totaling 12 hours a day for households and businesses.

At peak times, demand in South Africa averages between 28,000 MW and 34,000 MW.