This year’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) took place at a time when the country's economic crisis has worsened by Eskom's woes, amongst many pressing matters.
Ahead of the Address, politicians and the rest of the public had been anticipating to hear the solution that the President has to resolve the energy crisis in South Africa.
President Cyril Ramaphosa responded by declaring a State of Disaster over South Africa’s energy crisis in this year’s Address.
According to Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele, the state of disaster would allow Eskom to make decisions more speedily.
In a statement, outgoing Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter:
The country's rolling power cuts were here to stay, at least for the remainder of the year.
De Ruyter said that it was possible to fix some of the problems at the different power stations, but that would not end blackouts anytime soon.
This comes after Eskom publicly stated that South Africans ought to brace themselves to be on stage two and three power cuts for the next two years, as the state of the country’s electricity grid was still unstable.
The power utility’s head has shared that Eskom still needs to beef up its generating capacity, if it wants to put an end to the power cuts.
In the meantime, Eskom will be adding extra capacity to ease power cuts in the country as 3,000 megawatts will be added to the grid from neighbouring countries by March 2023.
The imported electricity will supply extra capacity that is equal to three stages of rolling blackouts.
Whilst, there's more than 9,000 megawatts of renewable energy projects that are being added to the grid at the moment.
“So, there is light at the end of the tunnel but the remainder of this year is going to be a challenge." said De Ruyter.
Recently, Ramaphosa informed Members of Parliament that he plans to appoint a Minister of Electricity in the Presidency to deal more effectively and urgently with the power challenges.
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede also said there’s no time to resolve South Africa’s energy crisis and the country cannot wait for 24 months.
