The end of load shedding hasn’t fixed South Africa’s power problem

Despite Eskom ending load shedding after 300+ consecutive days without outages, a new interactive report by solar specialist Wetility reveals severe power reliability disparities across South Africa's municipalities. Average outage durations ranged from 2 hours in iLembe district to 18.6 hours in Amajuba district in 2025, with a national average of 12.1 hours. Even major metros like Tshwane averaged 15.6-hour outages. The data highlights that fixing national generation capacity doesn't resolve local distribution failures caused by ageing infrastructure, cable theft, and municipal revenue constraints. Telecom operators corroborate the findings, reporting they still divert capex to power resilience despite the end of load shedding.