South Africa: Government wants to mitigate blackouts before election

The South African government pledged Wednesday to mitigate power outages that have affected the continent's most advanced economy a month before key national elections.

The giant electricity utility Eskom has imposed for ten consecutive days in March, a severe and very unpopular rationing, called shedding.

Stores, offices, factories and homes have been plunged into darkness for hours, arousing widespread anger that has become one of the biggest political threats to President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling party, the ANC, in view of the elections of 8 May.

S addressing reporters of a power plant located in the central province of the Free State, the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, announced his intention to minimize power outages during the next five months.

"We better understand the problems (and) we certainly have a clear plan," said the minister.

"We aim to avoid any load shedding from now on," he added, adding that if the need arose, the lowest level would be ranked at level one, as opposed to level four imposed . last month.

Eskom blamed last month's power outages for factory outages, the depletion of diesel stocks and the impact of Hurricane Idai in Mozambique, which disrupted transportation lines. 39, electricity imported.

With less than a month of national elections, power outages have shaken the party of the African National Congress, in power since the end of apartheid in 1994.

For many critics of the ANC, Eskom's power outages have become the symbol of the price that the public pays for alleged corruption and mismanagement.