Business is better for Sizeka Rashamosa now that she has a reliable electricity supply
Regular power cuts had become a feature of South African life and fed feelings the country was moving in the wrong direction, but the electricity supply has been uninterrupted since March leaving people to wonder what has changed.
It is a crisp winter’s day in Johannesburg, a clear blue sky shimmering over the bustling township of Alexandra, or Alex, as it is more commonly known here in South Africa.
Sizeka Rashamosa is standing in her restaurant, a stream of people swirling around her, some delivering crates of beer, another grilling meat on a hotplate. A group of young men are sitting at a sun-drenched table.
“I can’t talk,” she says, “I’m busy.”
It is a far cry from when we first met in March last year, at the height of South Africa’s power crisis and frequent load-shedding, the official term for scheduled power cuts.
Back then Ms Rashamosa had very little electricity and just one customer. A reflection of the wider impact on the economy.
“The power is everything,” she said at the time. “I’m very stressed. We don’t have money because of the electricity, you can see it’s dark. I don’t think I’ll survive in my business. We’ll have to close down after 25 years. It’s terrible.”
But now, when she finally finds a few minutes to talk, things are more positive.
“The load-shedding is much better now,” she says. “You can see, there’s electricity. And now I’m busy. I’m going to stay open, no plans to close, not anymore.”
It is a remarkable turnaround.
Load-shedding began in 2007, reaching a low last year with power cuts often lasting more than half a day.
This year it was expected to get worse. But now there has been no load-shedding for more than four months - since 05:00 on 26 March to be precise - the longest break in more than four years.
How has the turnaround happened, and will power cuts return?
It is largely because of a set of programmes from the state-owned power provider Eskom and the government over the last two years.
In July 2022 President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the Energy Action Plan, and the following February he declared a national state of disaster over the electricity crisis.
Soon after he created the role of electricity minister, appointing Kgosientsho Ramokgopa.
And then Eskom launched the two-year Generation Operational Recovery Plan, the key aim of which was to increase the amount of power - known as the “Energy Availability Factor” (EAF) - to 70% of the network’s potential.
At the same time Eskom overhauled its leadership, which most point to as a crucial factor.
For years the company had been beset by corruption under former President Jacob Zuma, known as "state capture", when it fell victim to acts of theft and sabotage. A former CEO even claimed to be have been poisoned.
“If you look at them now, it's a good mix. You have technical people, you have financial people, you have people with skills in turn around,” says energy analyst Ruse Moleshe.
“Our 40,000 employees that we have are more committed, more motivated, because load-shedding really was discouraging all of us, morale was very low,” says Daphne Mokwena, Eskom’s national spokesperson.
Another significant move last year was a 254bn rand ($14bn; £10.9bn) debt-relief package from the treasury to plug Eskom’s financial blackhole.
As a result there has been a substantial reduction in unplanned outages at Eskom’s power stations, that had been caused by break downs in units.
This in turn meant that a programme of planned maintenance could be carried out.
That has led to more energy capacity, and on 23 July it reached 35,000 MW, its highest in six years.
“There's been a pipeline of these large projects,” says energy expert Chris Yelland, referring to the plans that had been put in place since July 2022.
“It's like having a pipe where you stuff marbles in one end, and you keep on stuffing them in because it takes a long time, and eventually the marbles start popping out.”
Then there are the external factors.
“The first thing one can say is that the total demand for electricity [from Eskom] by the South African economy as a country has been reducing, for a decade,” says Mr Yelland.
This is down to two factors - the increasing energy bills and the spread of alternative energy sources.
“Every year we have an electricity price increase from Eskom at several times the inflation rate so the real price of electricity is going up and has been doing so for years,” says Mr Yelland.
“And there has been a remarkable increase in solar and battery energy storage systems across the board from individual residential applications, to commercial, industrial mining and agricultural.”
Sluggish economic growth has also led to less upward pressure on the demand for power.
