South Africa’s energy crisis is becoming a political one

South Africa is falling apart. Blackouts of up to ten hours a day are bringing businesses to a halt, making teaching harder and turning traffic lights dark. Food is rotting in warm fridges. There were more than 200 blackouts last year and they have continued every day so far in 2023.

A country that once saw itself as Africa’s industrial powerhouse is now regularly without power. The cause is a debt-ridden and run-down fleet of power stations, which have been starved of repairs and regularly break down. Electricity supplies have to be switched off to stop the grid collapsing. What began in 2007 as an emergency measure has become routine, while the building of two new plants has been bungled.

The power cuts are affecting every sector. Erratic supply is hitting the country’s mining giants, its major exporters. Small grocers and supermarkets are shutting shop. ShopRite, Africa’s biggest grocer, said in its financial results that it had to spend an extra £26 million on diesel in the final half of last year to run supermarket generators during power cuts. The country’s sugar industry estimates it will lose £33 million this year. Unemployment is running at around a third.

After 29 years in power, the crisis is about more than the economy for the ruling African National Congress. Parts of Johannesburg have been left without water because power cuts have hit pumping stations. Desperate residents have blocked streets with burning tyres. ‘Anybody who still denies we are in the midst of a national emergency is either being paid to do so or living in a parallel universe,’ said Cape Town’s chamber of commerce.

The state-run company that owns the power stations, Eskom, is getting deeper into debt.