Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane on Friday accused President Cyril Ramaphosa of failing to be transparent on the full extent of Eskom's power supply and financial crises.

"At a time at which our country is facing an unprecedented electricity crisis – with persistent power cuts being the new normal – President Ramaphosa is obfuscating the truth and refuses to play open cards with the people of South Africa," Maimane said. 

"For a man who has been in charge of turning around Eskom’s fortunes since 2014, he owes South Africa not just an explanation, but the full truth as to the extent of the crisis – including his government’s full plan to deal with this crisis. 

"The time for manufactured 'shock' and simple apologies from the president is over."

Maimane said he has written to Ramaphosa asking that he outline the full extent of the energy crisis and explain the total amount of debt owed by the power utility and the repayment schedule on the amount owed.

Specifically, Ramaphosa should say how much of Eskom's foreign denominated debt was due in the next two months.

Maimane also asked the president for details of government's plan to mitigate the current damage caused to infrastructure by power outages, and of a disaster management plan, if any, that would be implemented in the current power crisis worsened.

After a week of Stage 4 load-shedding, Eskom on Friday scaled down scheduled blackouts to Stage 2 after a shipment of diesel arrived in the country. It is used to fire open cycle gas turbines as an emergency measures when generating units are down.

Eskom spokesperson Andrew Etzinger was not available to provide further details.