Load shedding & water woes: Can South Africa fix its ailing infrastructure?
Al Jazeera
As a crucial election approaches, ANC government looks set to tap in to business in an effort to revamp infrastructure.
“I set up my company several years ago. The power cuts were bad then, lasting up to five hours a day,” said Lezanne Viviers, who works in the fashion industry and lives in Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city.
Since 2007, electricity cuts have become so common that Eskom – the state-owned electricity supplier – has devised a schedule for them. It calls these periods of national exasperation “load shedding”.
“We weren’t ready for it. But us South Africans are very resilient,” Viviers told Al Jazeera. “When there was load shedding, we worked with our hands and made use of the sunshine. I also bought a back-up engine. That was useful, as some power outages last year persisted all-day.”
More recently the country has experienced uninterpreted power for 57 days – the longest consecutive period in over two years – drawing allegations of electioneering ahead of next week’s general ballot.
Still, many companies have bought back-up diesel generators or solar panels, often at the expense of other investments and hiring. For small or informal businesses that cannot afford secondary supplies, working around the blackouts – or not working at all – is unavoidable.
