Johannesburg, South Africa
CNN
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Car accidents, opportunistic criminals, rotting food, rotting bodies, bankrupt businesses, and water scarcity. Welcome to life under South Africa’s power blackout.
The serious extent of the outage came to the fore last week when South Africans were advised to bury their dead loved ones within four days.
In a public statement, the South African Funeral Practitioners Association warned that bodies in morgues were rapidly decomposing due to constant power cuts, putting huge pressure on funeral parlors struggling to process corpses.
The situation is so bad that the country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is considering declaring a national disaster, as was the case in 2020 at the peak of the Covid pandemic, which had a devastating impact on the country’s economy.
Last week, hundreds of supporters of the Democratic Alliance opposition party marched under heavy security in the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town to express their frustration over the frequent blackouts.
Known locally as loadshedding, widespread power blackouts are carried out several times a day by state-owned energy utility Eskom to avoid total collapse of the grid.
Shortages in the power system unbalance the network, and Eskom has said controlled outages are necessary to maintain reserve margins, and the system remains stable.
While the country has been experiencing power cuts for years, scheduled blackouts have become routine since September 2022, affecting every part of South African society.
For some people, not having access to reliable power can be the difference between life and death.
Before she died in October 2022, Lise van Os needed oxygen for 17 hours a day. Her family said as her stationary oxygen machine required mains power, the loadshedding period was extremely stressful, especially when the power did not come back on as scheduled.
His daughter, Karin McDonald, was forced to explore backup options such as inverters and back-up oxygen mobile tanks, which only lasted a short time.
“The power outage at the end (of his life) caused a lot of concern for everyone,” she said.
South Africans will experience more than twice as many power cuts in 2022 than any other year. And things are going to get worse in 2023.
Even simple daily tasks need to be organized around loadshedding schedules, including meal planning, travel times, tasks requiring internet connectivity.
From preparing baby formula to running fans during the summer, a lack of access to mains power makes daily life challenging for South Africans.
Maneo Motsmai, a domestic worker in Johannesburg, says the outage prevents her from doing simple tasks such as cooking.
“I boil water to cook mili mi (maize porridge) and the power goes out. I can’t eat, it sucks. I can’t face like this,” Motsmai told CNN.
Pump stations cannot provide water, according to people CNN spoke to, and without access to backup power, many small businesses have had to close up shop and lay off employees.
Thando Mkhubu runs Soweto Creamery, an ice cream shop in Jabulani, Soweto, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. His family pooled the small welfare grants they received during the Covid-19 pandemic to set up the business, but are now feeling the pressure of power cuts.
In early January, the shop was without power for 72 hours after the power did not come back on as scheduled. Thando was forced to spend money for diesel to run his generators and prevent all his stock from melting down. He says the outages are costly and are destroying his hopes of expansion.
Bongi Monjanaga, who runs a startup cleaning services company operating in Johannesburg, says operating power cleaning equipment, entering and leaving premises when security gates are not working, and invoicing customers Outages affect every part of their new business. and complete tax compliance documents online.
“I find myself in this pool of sadness when I’m just trying to get started. I’m just trying to grow,” she says.
The increase in power outages is also of great concern for South Africa’s food security, putting further pressure on rising prices and stretched household budgets.
With modern agricultural practices increasingly dependent on electricity for irrigation, processing and storage of crops, load shedding is having a huge impact on agricultural production.
Guy Olivier, a farmer from Hertzogville in Free State province in east-central South Africa, says he and other farmers in the region have been forced to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of seed potatoes due to disruption of the ‘cold chain’ . ‘ – (The process of keeping produce refrigerated throughout the supply chain.)
Demand from producers is also low due to water scarcity due to the reliance on electricity to operate pump stations.
“We have done everything we can to make sure there is food on the table at a very good price, but it has become very capital intensive to farm,” says Olivier.
Meanwhile, cattle and poultry are dying even before reaching the slaughterhouse.
A gruesome video circulating on social media shows workers removing 50,000 dead broiler chickens from a farm in North West province after the birds suffocated when a power failure shut down the ventilation system. The financial damage to the farmer was approximately ZAR1.6m ($93,300) according to Local media reports.
South Africa is notorious for high crime rates, and loadshedding is making it worse as home security systems fail when the power goes out, giving criminals a field day inside unsecured properties.
Policing also becomes difficult, with officers unable to reach crime scenes quickly due to congestion when traffic lights are closed.
Tumelo Mogodiseng, general secretary of the South African Policing Union (SAPU), describes load-shedding as “an epidemic”.
They say their members’ lives are now at greater risk, as officers are unable to see potentially dangerous situations in the dark, and police stations, many of which do not have backup power systems, are at risk of attack by criminals during blackouts. .
“Cops are dying every day in this country. If it’s happening in broad daylight, what happens when there’s no light for them to see at night?”
Mogodiseng is also concerned that crimes are not being reported, with citizens fearful of leaving their homes during outages and traveling in the dark. “The community will not travel to police stations to open cases because they are afraid,” he told CNN.
Gareth Newham, who runs the Justice and Violence Prevention Program at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, says it is hard to get solid data on the impact on crime. While anecdotal evidence suggests criminals are taking advantage of the outage, recent increases in loadshedding have coincided with the Christmas holidays, when crime rates typically increase.
Their greatest concern is that continued loadshedding or the collapse of a temporary grid in parts of South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces 18 months ago could lead to a repeat of coordinated civil unrest, rioting and looting.
“An outright breakdown in the grid could be a trigger for local-level gangs to gain more power, and we could see violence similar to what we saw in July 2021.”
Under the ruling African National Congress (ANC) since 1994, Eskom has become synonymous with corruption, crime and mismanagement.
last year a judge led inquiry Into corruption under the former president, Jacob Zuma, found that there were grounds to prosecute several former Eskom executives.
The government has failed to build new power stations to meet the increased demand, and has ignored warnings from energy experts about supply shortfalls over the past two decades.
A 2019 reports The South African Institution of Civil Engineering has shown that skilled engineers are leaving the country in large numbers.
In-spite of this spend billions of dollars Of the two huge coal power stations, neither works properly.
Old plants have fallen into disrepair due to lack of maintenance and organized crime steals vital coal supplies and cables from rail lines leading from mines to power stations.
Renewable energy companies say they are desperate to supply the grid, but the government has been slow to cut red tape and streamline regulatory processes that limit environmental authorities, registration of new projects and deadlines for grid connection approval. Will reduce
Legal challenges against the government and Eskom are mounting. Many political parties and trade unions say they will Take the government and state utility to court For not fulfilling its duty to provide electricity.
With no end in sight to the outages, South Africans are desperate for alternative energy sources, but even they are out of reach for many citizens.
Thando Makhubu says he was shocked by the cost of powering his ice cream business off-grid. “We were quoted R100,000 ($5,945) and that didn’t include the solar panels.”
Carin McDonald, who runs a swimming school, similarly found the upfront costs of solar prohibitive. “We received quotes for solar for business and home and were looking at nothing less than half a million rand ($29,500) which is a major life decision,” she said.
There is a long wait for solar too. “I know one solar provider who had 40 requests last week, all for large solar projects,” said Angus Williamson, a pastoralist in KwaZulu-Natal province.
As they come to terms with their new reality, many South Africans are finding it difficult to remain optimistic.
“The light at the end of the tunnel is a train headed in our direction,” Williamson said.