[imagesource:unsplash/rajatsarkee]

The blame for the recent bout of Stage 6 load-shedding is apparently being laid at the door of ‘affluent South Africans’ using air conditioners and fans.

This is according to Lethabo Power Station general manager Karabo Rakgolela, as per the Sunday Times. The recent heatwave resulted in a huge spike in power usage, causing the utility to implement more severe power cuts.

Rakgolela told the newspaper “We had a stable grid for most of September and October, and two weeks ago, suddenly, the problems started when we started seeing the partial load losses begin to climb, I can place a lot of the reasons for our current problems at the door of the extreme swings in temperature we had.”

“In a heatwave such as this recent one, you can see the usage go up as the entire affluent South Africa switches on their airconditioning and fans, and that usage stays up as long as it stays warm.”

“The heatwave put us in a bad position. We had failures on some units, and I know we use the term ‘unexpected’ very loosely, but these failures we did not anticipate,” said Rakgolela.

Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa stated that Eskom had over-used its emergency reserves, contributing to increased power cuts.

“For purposes of protecting the grid, we need to ensure that we continue to protect the reserves, so we are not going to engage them at a heightened intensity, and as a result, we don’t have the benefit of the 4,600MW that we would automatically draw from our emergency reserves.”

Instead of laying the blame for load-shedding at the door of ‘affluent South Africans’ and their bourgeois habit of using fans to cool themselves, how about blaming the useless politicians and tenderpreneurs who destroyed the utility in the first place?

You can buy a lovely three-speed fan from Game for R299. Hardly a sign of affluence, but we suppose it’s easier to blame the public for the government’s utter incompetence.

‘Affluent’ South Africans’ fault? What a blerrie cheek.

[source:mybroadband]