'Stage 4 load-shedding has plunged 20% of SA into darkness’

Eskom implemented its highest stage of load-shedding for the first time in a decade on Monday.

Blom believes that the crisis at the power utility has left the country teetering on the brink of disaster.

"It's probably the worst of all scenarios. With this situation about 20% of the country is offline and in darkness.

"We have now reached a stage where Eskom, even if they wanted to fix the generators, are probably busy running out of money as well.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced during his State of the Nation Address on Thursday that the power utility would be unbundled into three entities - generation, transmission and distribution.

The unbundling is part of government's turnaround strategy and aimed reducing costs at the power utility.

Eskom is estimated to be running at an annual loss of R20 billion and Blom says the situation will not be resolved immediately.

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"It seems to me that the problem is that Eskom is experiencing an operational meltdown at its plants and that is because their maintenance is behind and they just run out of capacity.

"The new plant is not operating properly and the old plant hasn't been maintained properly.”

The power utility has predicted that the current round of load-shedding will last until April.

Blom predicts that stage 4 might be a reality for the next two weeks.  

"So I think you going to have rotational load-shedding of at least four hours at a time per day for the next two weeks or so I guess.”