Back from the festive holidays? So is load shedding

As the holiday cheer fades, South Africans face a familiar foe: loadshedding. The power cuts, which took an 18-day break over the festive season, have returned with a vengeance, casting a shadow over the New Year.

Eskom, implemented Stage 2 and Stage 3 load shedding on 2 January, disrupting daily routines across various regions.

A bitter blow to many who had hoped for a more stable start to the year.

According to the statement released by Eskom on Monday, with the intensified maintenance aimed at improving the fleet performance they had a setback of three generating units with a combined capacity of 2,148MW not coming back online as anticipated.

Watch | Ramokgopa explains where all this festive electricity is coming from

“This coupled with a loss of six generating units and projected electricity increase in electricity demand that requires stage 2 loadshedding to be implemented from 05:00 to 16:00 on Tuesday, followed by Stage 3 loadshedding until 05:00 on Wednesday,” said Eskom.

They said:

The news was met with anger and frustration, particularly given the brief reprieve during the holidays. Many South Africans took to social media to express their disappointment and urge Eskom to find solutions to the ongoing power crisis.

The instigator took it to X to share a screenshot of a tweet he posted in 2023, noting that it is soon for Eskom to announce loadshedding.

Vho Elon Masakhane noted that this was all deliberate because Eskom's engineers want to be paid for overtime.

Meanwhile, Kwazee Ncube believed that the statement had been on Eskom's archives waiting for its announcement.