A shop owner searches for an item for a customer by candlelight during load-shedding on May 5 2023. Picture: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS
Through most of this, the government has seemed hell-bent on perpetuating the conditions that led it to this situation. From China to Brazil and India to Vietnam, developing countries that have left an open door to renewable power have found no shortage of demand to top up declining fossil-fired electricity.
It’s a similar story with lithium-ion batteries, used to back up grid and small-scale storage, as well as in electric vehicles. Imports in the fourth quarter of 2022 came to $365m, more than in the three years through 2020 put together. That’s reversed as the breakdown of the grid has encouraged businesses to bypass Eskom’s network altogether, or at least use it only as a transmission conduit from power plant to socket. About 2.5GW worth of renewable projects were registered with the government regulator in the March quarter of 2023 alone, more than in the previous three years put together, according to Gaylor Montmasson-Clair, an economist at Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies, a local thinktank.