South Africa is bracing for a sixth consecutive day of load shedding on Wednesday while the power system remains severely constrained.
Eskom and the Department of Public Enterprises held a press conference on Tuesday, in Johannesburg to update the country.
Here are the top 7 quotes from the briefing:
1. “To answer the question: how long will load-shedding last? We will come back to you in 10 to 14 days. We have no magic formula. There is no magic wand to say load-shedding is over” – Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan
2. “The last option is to load shed. It is not something taken lightly. We understand [the]inconvenience and [the] pain. We do hope we will reach a level of predictability”- Eskom chairperson Jabu Mabuza
3. “It will be a huge struggle to overcome this crisis” - Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan
4. “We have not communicated adequately with the South African public. You shouldn’t just get the load-shedding alert. We need to say more than that to South Africans. We need to account better to the South African public”- Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan.
5. “We are recovering democratic governance and re-establishing the resilience of our institutions. The current [power] crisis is an outcome of state capture” – Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan
6. “In the last five years, maintenance spend was getting less and less, [which was] incongruent with [power] plants ageing more and more”- Eskom chairperson Jabu Mabuza
7. “We are very far from a point of total black-out. The system operators’ main task is to defend and protect the grid”- Eskom chairperson Jabu Mabuza