There will be no load-shedding for voting and vote-counting: Gordhan

There will be no load-shedding on voting day, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said on Wednesday night.

Speaking at a press briefing after the country was moved to level 4 rotational blackouts earlier in the day, the minister said he had held “intensive discussions” with Eskom's board and senior management.

He said that he was assured that measures were in place to ensure that the voting and vote-counting would not be affected by load-shedding — unless there was an “unexpected event”.

Gordhan said that overnight on Wednesday about 2,000MW of power would be returned to operation, which means that load-shedding would be downgraded from level 4 to level 3. Then, over the course of Thursday and Friday, “a few more thousand” megawatts would be brought back online, which will see load-shedding further reduced to level 2.

“Over the weekend, I’m told by the Eskom management, load-shedding will stop, which means that as South Africans go to the polls on Monday and as the counting proceeds on Monday evening and over next few days, there will be no load-shedding unless there is some unexpected event — which I’m assured by the board and management is unlikely ,” said Gordhan.

He added that Eskom and government were doing “everything possible” to ensure the elections were not disrupted.

This is a developing story.