President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday night announced what he called an 'energy action plan' to tackle South Africa's power crisis. This is what the plan entails.

On Monday night, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a set of actions to respond to South Africa's yearslong energy crisis.

"The crisis that we are facing requires that we should take bold, courageous and decisive action to close the electricity gap," he said, continuing that, "as government, we are announcing a number of interventions to overcome the immediate crisis".

Ramaphosa acknowledged that the recent bout of Stage 6 rolling blackouts had "made clear" that "the actions we have taken, and continue to take, are not enough".

The President announced five actions as well as "additional measures to achieve long-term energy security and end load shedding for good".

The first action is improving the performance of Eskom's existing fleet of power stations by, among others:

Seeing that Eskom increases its budget allocated for critical maintenance over the next 12 months;

Cutting red tape that has made it difficult for Eskom to buy maintenance spares and equipment within the required period to effect repairs;

Recruiting skilled personnel, including former senior Eskom plant managers and engineers, from the...