Only time will tell if blackouts are over

South Africans have become so frustrated with the lack of consistent power supply, it’s only natural for them to cynically ask the question – will load shedding return after the elections?

We’ve now “enjoyed” 41 days free of load shedding.

ALSO READ: Electricity situation a win for democracy, says expert

The 29 May general election is three weeks away. It’s not a stretch to suggest the two are not connected.

Cue Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa to put the nation at ease, wink, wink.

He said: “We are in the silly season. There’s going to be a number of interpretations of what is before us, whether there is a correlation of this improvement to the elections.

There is no correlation between this performance and the date of 29 May. When the team were making these efforts, when we ramped up planned maintenance in December and January, little did we know that there would be a big date with ballots.”

He added: “This is not staged. This is not managed. This is an orchestrated effort and engineering feat by the team at Eskom.

“What we know is that UCF is tracking at about 29% as of April 2024, as opposed to 34% of April 2023. So we have recovered, in percentage terms, five percentage points over a period of the same period in April and the comparable period this year in April. We are not yet there.

ALSO READ: ‘It’s not staged’ – Ramokgopa says no link between lack of load shedding and elections

“I will not make a false claim that we are there, but we are getting there even much quicker than we had anticipated.”

Only time will tell if this is the case. Winter is also around the corner, so the demand on the grid will be that much greater the colder it gets.

But by all intents and purposes it does seem as though we are finally taking load shedding more seriously than in the past.

Energy analyst Chris Yelland believes this “is not an election conspiracy”, and “this is democracy at work”. We certainly hope so. Either way, we’ll know in a month or two…