Eskom extends scheduled power cuts to weekend

South Africa’s state-owned power utility Eskom will continue rolling blackouts over the weekend due to a continued shortage of generation capacity.

The utility will cut 2 000 megawatts from the grid from 4 p.m. until midnight on Saturday and Sunday, it said on Friday in a statement on Twitter. The current round of blackouts, known locally as loadshedding, started on August 3 after 11 days without interruptions.

Outages have hit record levels in 2022, with the country experiencing 87 days of power cuts so far. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has turned to the private sector in a bid to end the 14-year-old power crisis that the government has failed to resolve.