Angry citizens picket outside Eskom’s Megawatt Park in Midrand

A group of concerned citizens are picketing outside Eskom’s Megawatt Park in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, on Friday morning. The group is unhappy about the rolling blackouts and is calling for the axing of Eskom CEO Andre de Ryuter and the board.

Spokesperson for the citizens’ march against blackouts, Prince Rulashe says they are fed up with blackouts.

“Our main purpose of today is to say to South Africa that we are really fed up with blackouts. We are also demanding the removal of Eskom’s Andre de Ryuter as Eskom is facing a financial crisis with blackouts under his leadership so one of our demands as citizens is that He must be fired or resign and failure to that we are calling on the president to fire him from Eskom as the CEO.”

Meanwhile, Eskom has suspended stage two blackouts. The power utility says the suspension is with effect from 5am on Friday after generation capacity recovered enough to enable it to stop the blackouts.

On Thursday, Eskom CEO, André de Ruyter, said that improvements in the power system had allowed the power utility to return electricity to normal ahead of schedule.

The country was plunged into darkness when stage four was announced earlier this week.

On Friday morning, Eskom’s Group Chief Executive, André de Ruyter, briefed the media on system challenges following rolling blackouts in South Africa.

Video: Eskom briefs media on system challenges following rolling blackouts in SA

This was scaled down to stage two on Thursday.

#POWERALERT1

Loadshedding will be reduced to Stage 2 from 12:00 today, and will be suspended at 05:00 on Friday as generating capacity sufficiently recovers@News24 @Newzroom405 @SABCNews @eNCA @SundayTimesZA @SowetanLIVE pic.twitter.com/wk27kF3WwW

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) November 11, 2021