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In Friday's long-awaited briefing to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa admitted that, despite some progress having been made, there is still no definitive path to end loadshedding in South Africa. This means that power outages, along with the rise in cost-of-living and job losses associated with them – will continue indefinitely.

Ramokgopa appeared candid when addressing the economic cost of loadshedding, and freely admitted the cost of the energy crisis to millions of South Africans. Shockingly, the Minister disclosed that loadshedding costs the South African GDP up to R899 million every single day – a fact that is well known by the millions of South Africans who remain unemployed and trapped in a contracting economy.

However, the Minister did claim that generation and transmission capacity is in the process of being expanded. According to the Minister, Unit 2 at Kusile Power Station is due to re-enter service at the end of this month, with Kusile Unit 5 scheduled to do the same in December. Medupi Unit 4 is scheduled to re-enter service early next year, meaning that generation capacity is predicted to stand at 32 200 MW by May 2024.

By Minister Ramokgopa’s own admission, this is still not enough.

South Africa’s power stations, when fully functional, should be capable of generating at least 50 000 MW, meaning that almost half of the nation’s generating capacity remains unusable. Even if no further generating units break down – a virtually constant occurrence in recent years - this amount will be insufficient to get South Africa through the winter demand peaks. This means that, despite claims made by Fikile Mbalula and Gwede Mantashe that 2023 would see the end of loadshedding, blackouts will continue into 2024 and beyond, with no apparent end in sight.

DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Energy Christopher Fry says: “While I thank the Minister for his briefing and his work, it is clear that the ANC has no plan in place to decisively deal with loadshedding. With nearly a billion Rand bleeding from our economy every single day due to blackouts, incremental and occasional increases to generating capacity simply do not cut it. Unfortunately, it seems that blackouts will persist as long as the ANC does.”

Issued by Christopher Fry, MPP - DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Energy