• President Cyril Ramaphosa cancelled his trip to the annual World Economic Forum meeting Davos on Sunday.
• The President has reportedly scheduled briefings with “key stakeholders” for this week.
• There are several calls for a National Shutdown alongside a march to Luthuli House being planned by the Democratic Alliance to protest loadshedding and tariff hikes.

As South Africans grow increasingly frustrated with unrelenting Stage 6 loadshedding, the President of the country has decided an international trip may be poorly timed.

That trip is to the World Economic Forum hosted in Davos, Switzerland each year. The annual meeting is set to kick-off today and runs through until 20th January. Among the topics that will be discussed by world leaders, economic heavyweights and others are food shortages, financial woes and geopolitical tensions.

But South Africa’s President will no longer be attending the event according to spokesperson for the Presidency, Vincent Magwenya.

“Due to the ongoing energy crisis, President Cyril Ramaphosa has cancelled his working visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Currently the President is convening a meeting with leaders of political parties represented in parliament, NECCOM (National Energy Crisis Committee) and the Eskom board,” Magwenya tweeted on Sunday.

The spokesperson later added that Ramaphosa had already engaged with the leadership at Eskom and NECCOM. Additional briefing sessions are to be held with “key stakeholders” this week.

What Ramaphosa hopes to accomplish by cancelling this trip, is unclear. The Presidency last week responded to tariff hikes by saying its hands were tied. While that may be the case, the lack of compassion for those severely impacted by the ever rising cost of living, lack of electricity and an absence of governance can’t be helping the President nor the ruling party.

Silence from Eskom

While decision makers are being engaged, South Africans are being left to wonder in silence. Stage 6 loadshedding has been in place continuously since Wednesday 11th January and Eskom has not provided so much as a morsel of an update.

Last week on Wednesday, Eskom utility revealed that 5 048MW of capacity had been lost when generating units at Camden, Duvha, Grootvlei, Hendrina, Kendal, Kriel, Majuba and Matla power stations failed.

As Eskom remains mum on the state of repairs, improvements to the national grid or indeed further failures, South Africans have had enough.

As reported by Daily Maverick, the African Transformation Movement took to Twitter at the weekend to call on South Africans to participate in a National Shutdown to protest loadshedding.

In addition, the Democratic Alliance called on South Africans to participate in a march to Luthuli House on 25th January.

“We do not accept that while the ANC is subjecting ordinary South Africans to 11 hours of loadshedding per day, the residences of the President, his cabinet ministers and his deputy ministers get no load-shedding at all. The very people who have broken Eskom are exempting themselves from the effects of their own failure. This is why they have no sense of urgency to fix their own mess,” the DA said on Saturday.

The feeling of frustration is growing among South Africans and there is large support for both the DA’s march and a National Shutdown.

To put loadshedding into perspective, The Sowetan ran the front page featured below this morning showcasing how many small businesses in Gauteng have had to shutter as a result of power cuts.

Loadshedding has been in place since early September 2022 with only one day in October being loadshedding free. While Eskom did manage to keep the lights on for 24 hours from 05:00 on 25th December to 05:00 on 26th December, plans to suspend loadshedding for New Year’s day fell by the wayside due to failures at the utility.

Should there be any change to loadshedding, we will endeavour to update you.