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Last night, South Africa recoiled in horror when Eskom dropped the Stage Six bombshell.

For one, the premier load shedding app, EskomSePush, only goes up to Stage Four, meaning nobody was quite sure what the hell was going on.

Before the night was out, we had dropped back down to Stage Four, and some breathed a sigh of relief.

Congrats – only plunged into darkness twice or three times a day. Hurrah.

It wasn’t that long ago that Eskom was saying Stage Eight planning was unnecessary, but the wheels seem to have really come off an already sinking ship in the past week.

According to BusinessTech, if we do hit Stage Eight, it’s going to be crippling:

During stage 8 load shedding, consumers would be without power for 48 hours over four days, or 96 hours in eight days.

It’s already crippling, we should add, but 12 hours a day (and potentially more) is almost Venezuela-like.

Strap in, because we’re in for the long haul:

Eskom spokesperson Dikatso Mothae warned that the country could experience two more years of power cuts.

Mothae told EWN, getting the system to be reliable and in good shape to operate effectively would take some time.

“The bigger issue is because we have not maintained our power station units over many years. It is going to take some time to get to a state where they are more reliable. Currently, the system is very vulnerable and unpredictable,” she said.

“We are working around, making sure that in the long term we have a more predictable system. But it will take some time to get to that point. We’re talking about two years and we’d have to live with potential load shedding.”

Do you trust these imbeciles to fix the problem in two years? I feel like we’ve heard this all before – remember that ‘War Room’ that then-Deputy President Ramaphosa oversaw back in 2015?

Consider this article from Fin24 in January of that year:

A visit to Eskom ahead of its quarterly state of the power briefing on Thursday can be seen as a strong sign that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa will take an active role in overseeing the turnaround of the state power utility.

Ramaphosa was early last month assigned by President Jacob Zuma to oversee the turnaround of the three ailing state owned companies: Eskom, the South African Airways, and the South African Post Office.

Well, you’re zero for three there, Cyril.

Fast forward to today, and this incredibly sobering piece, again from Fin24, who spoke with energy analyst Chris Yelland:

South Africa was “really close to the edge”, but the public generally has a lack of understanding about the seriousness of the electricity crisis.

“Believe me, stage 6 load shedding is bad.”

…”It is all very well to speak about [equipment] breakdowns, but demand for electricity right now is not very high, and yet we are at stage 6,” said Yelland on Monday evening.

“It is not the demand that is the problem. It is the supply,” he said.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of it all is being kept in the dark, literally and figuratively, about what is happening behind the scenes.

The reason for this appears simple – everyone involved knows that they have f*cked up royally, and taking ownership, or letting us know how bad this mess really is, would damage the people and political party that has overseen the implosion of Eskom.

Back to Yelland:

“We don’t know how close we are to the edge at any time. We tend to think when there is no load shedding that all is well. But we are really close to the edge.

“The problem is the total lack of transparency at Eskom as to what is really going on. But none of us know how close we are because Eskom does not make this info available.”

Why would they? It only serves to underline just how criminally inept they are.

Nobody wants to be a doomsayer, especially this close to the end of the year when we’re all hanging by a thread, but this is a disaster of seismic proportions.

12 years of load shedding, one party at the helm, zero cadres held accountable.

[sources:bustech&fin24&fin24]