100 days with lights

NO POWER CUTS: IMPROVED PERFORMANCE RAISES CONFIDENCE IN SA

In many nations, continuous electricity supply is taken for granted - in South Africa, it's a major milestone. SA has now had 100 days of no load shedding, Eskom said on Friday.

The breakthrough is the result of a recovery plan initiated in March last year and "aggressive" maintenance of the company's power plants, it added.

Eskom's failure to maintain its ageing fleet of generating facilities, coupled with mismanagement and corruption, rendered the utility incapable of meeting electricity demand which resulted in record outages last year.

This hurt output at businesses and led to the slowest rate of expansion since Covid in 2020 when the economy grew by 0.7%.

"The absence of load shedding not only benefits economy and our businesses, but enhances the quality of the lives of our citizens," said Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.