Mbalula: If load shedding goes beyond December, we must get answers

African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Fikile Mbalula says he is still confident that South Africa will enter 2024 without load shedding.

If this doesn’t happen, the country must get a reasonable explanation.

The country is moving between stages 3, 4 and 5 load shedding “due to improved generation recovery and emergency reserves”, said Eskom on Thursday morning.

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The current load shedding schedule has not affected Mbalula’s faith in the country’s energy action plan and says it should get the country out of load shedding by end of December.

Mbalula vs load shedding

“Load shedding is our Achilles’ heel. We have always said that by December we want load shedding gone. That’s one thing we have said. We also said the action plan we have implemented must guarantee this country to getting us out of load shedding.

“Not for the purposes of the elections, but to fix our economy battered by this load shedding… companies, job losses and all that,” Mbalula told eNCA on Wednesday.

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“We’re still there, if it is ended before end of December we will be elated. If load shedding goes beyond December, there should be a reasonable explanation as to what is holding us back to get out of this crisis of electricity supply in our country.”

The ruling party has not changed its stance on the matter, he said.

“As the ANC, there is no change in terms of the timelines. We expected December and we’re still very much hopeful that when we saw that it began to decrease during the winter, we managed to at least come to the level of stage 3.

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“Even now, we’re still confident that we’ll get out of this and guarantee this country a long-lasting solution of doing away with load shedding.”

Generators for load shedding

Meanwhile, Minister in the Presidency responsible for Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, received the first consignment of energy equipment donated by the People’s Republic of China.

The equipment was received in a handover ceremony in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, on Thursday.

The first consignment consists of 450 gasoline generators.

The generators will be used as backup to alleviate the impacts of load shedding in clinics, schools and courts.

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The donation forms part of the Technical Assistance Programme that was entered into in August during China’s Head of State visit to South Africa.