History will judge current ministers harshly should they fail to act with urgency now to avoid further power cuts. It takes time to plan, design and run competitive procurement processes, and for projects to be constructed and produce electricity.
South Africa is sleep-walking into further periods of power cuts and darkness. Eskom has re-instituted load-shedding. A fifth of Eskom's power stations are broken at any one time. And no new grid-connected electricity generation capacity has been procured since November 2014, despite Eskom system adequacy reports indicating that we are short of power and risks of further power outages are high.
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