Business Unity South Africa (Busa) says Eskom’s failure to address the ongoing rolling blackouts has led to the country’s lowest business confidence in 13 years.

This comes as Eskom implemented Stage 4 load shedding, which is expected to last until Friday morning.

Thereafter Stage 2 load shedding will be implemented until five o’clock on Saturday morning.

According to the recent Business Partners Small and Medium Enterprise Index, blackouts have affected 49% of small businesses in South Africa.

Almost 60 % of the businesses say the scheduled power outages pose a significant threat to their daily operations and ultimately, their revenue.

President of Busa, Bonang Mohale says, “First rolling blackouts were in January of 2008, where we are now, we have not been able to fix this thing for 13 years which then leads to the lowest level of confidence since the second world war.”

Mohale says, “So Eskom’s electricity supply has now become sporadic, unreliable, unpredictable and volatile. We know that each time we switch off the light, the loss per day used to be anything between a billion to 2 billion a day every day, now it’s going towards 3 billion a day. If you’re a small or medium enterprise, half your day is taken by stage 4 load shedding taking 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon.”

Competence

Independent market analyst Mandla Maleka says the power outage is an issue of competence and no longer a system breaking down.

Below is the full interview with Maleka:

In the video below, South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) General-Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi says Eskom has put a dent in a much struggling economy: