‘A better time is coming’- Ramaphosa praises SA’s ‘resilience’ as load shedding worsens

President Cyril Ramaphosa has reacted to worsening load shedding after his hope-filled messages on the topic in his State of the Nation Address, calling the end of power cuts a “process”.

Electricity shortages have left millions in the dark, affecting businesses, the economy, education, international investment, and basic services. Stage 6 load shedding was implemented at midnight after two generating units were taken offline and pumped storage dams needed to be replenished.

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Ramaphosa addressed the power crisis in his speech on Thursday, declaring his government’s confidence “the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach“. But just over 24 hours later load shedding was worse by four stages.

Speaking on the issue, Ramaphosa admitted load shedding had evoked “a lot of anger”, but said South Africans were resilient and hopeful of “a better time”.

“It is a constant problem for South Africans. We know that and everybody feels it. And it’s not comfortable at all. In fact, it does sometimes evoke a lot of anger. But, as I’ve said, we do have the resilience as South Africans to keep on ensuring that we do hope for a better time. And a better time is coming.”

When will it end?

He refused to be drawn on when load shedding would end.

“The issue of the ending of load shedding is a moot one. Everybody wants to know…when is it ending. When you give them a date and there’s load shedding thereafter, they say you were lying and you make empty, false promises. So we are not going to do that because this is a process.

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“Through the National Electricity Crisis Committee, everything is put in place. All the pillars are put in place to finally address load shedding.

“It would be wonderful and ideal to give a date but processes like these that are engineering based…you cannot really put a date to,” he said.