Cape Town — The rolling electricity black-outs continue to play havoc with the lives of Capetonians as going through robot intersections, doing the shopping or even pulling the car out the driveway has become a daily lottery.

The latest round of load-shedding was implemented from Sunday and the Cape Argus has received numerous SMSes and phone calls from increasingly angry residents.

One resident in Penlyn Estate, Athlone, who did not want her name mentioned, said she was "very angry with Eskom" after her daughter missed her first day at school because they could not pull the family car out of the garage.

Shopping centres have borne the brunt of the blackouts.

Vangate Mall in Athlone has had four blackouts in the past four days, for two hours at a time, leading to many shops being forced to close their doors.

Faizel Royker, an optometrist at Spectacle Select in Vangate Mall, said the blackouts had caused disturbances during consultation times.

"Many of the clients refuse to come back to meet with you and in that way revenue is lost," he said.

Royker is adamant that Eskom should do its load-shedding at night as opposed to during trading hours.

"It's crazy; they should put the lights out after midnight when most of the city is expected to be asleep," he said.

Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry director Albert Schuitmaker said businesses had been badly affected, but it was too early to be talking about figures.

He said he had received several calls from frustrated businesspeople across the province, wanting to know if there was "light at the end of the tunnel".

Traffic spokesperson Searle Johannes said there had not been any reports of accidents at robot intersections as a result of the power failures.

"At intersections, where the lights are out, we are asking that people treat it as a four-way-stop and it appears people are adhering to that," said Johannes.

He said traffic teams had been out on the roads monitoring the intersections.

Provincial Health Department spokesperson Faiza Steyn said the previous blackouts had caused major problems but this time state hospitals were prepared.

"We checked out the equipment, we refurbished at some of the hospitals and as a result we have not had any major incidents reported this time around," she said.