Angry South Africans vent Eskom blackout frustrations on Twitter

Social media postings about Eskom surged to a record this week, with Twitter sentiment overwhelmingly negative.

South Africans are facing more than four hours of power cuts at a time because the state-owned utility can’t produce enough electricity from its old and poorly maintained plants to meet demand. As of Wednesday, they had endured 107 days in 2022 of so-called loadshedding — the worst year yet — with more pain to come.

Essential services that have been disrupted include mobile and internet connectivity, and provision of water and sanitation. The outages are causing traffic snarl ups and halting business, leading to public criticism of the government.

The chart displays how many tweets about Eskom have been published in 30-minute intervals by accounts monitored by Bloomberg. The lower part shows whether the tweets were positive or negative.

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