Eskom to Continue Rolling Out Stage 5 Blackouts Till Saturday Morning and Stages 3 and 4 Next Week

• South Africans can look forward to another dark weekend and week as the power utility company Eskom promises to roll out more blackouts
• A statement issued on Friday stated that loadshedding Stage 5 will be implemented until Saturday morning
• Mzansi can then expect to be hit with Stages 4 and 3 until Monday, 26 September at 05:00 am

South Africans will celebrate Heritage Day in darkness as the country's ailing utility company Eskom has announced its schedule for the weekend and next week.

According to a statement issued on Friday, 23 September, Eskom said Stage 5 blackouts will be rolled out until Saturday at 5 am, and the country will move to Stage 4 on Sunday and Stage 3 until 5 am on Monday.

News 24 reports that Eskom said it is experiencing diesel shortages, and the loasdshedding will be used to tackle that issue. The statement read:

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"Eskom is experiencing constraints from its diesel suppliers that are affecting the availability of bulk diesel to the Ankerlig and Gourikwa open-cycle gas turbines, which have a combined capacity of 2,000MW. Should this uncertainty of diesel supplies persist, higher stages of load-shedding may be required. Since Thursday, each generation unit at Camden, Kriel, Majuba and Matla power stations was taken offline for repairs. A generating unit at Hendrina and two at Kusile power stations was returned to service."

According to TimesLIVE, the power company also asked South Africa to bear with them as they deal with the diesel shortages.

"Eskom apologises for the continued and unfortunate load-shedding, which is implemented only as a last resort in view of the shortage of generation capacity and the need to attend to breakdowns."

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In more news, Briefly News reported that South Africa's second democratic president Thabo Mbeki warned citizens not to be fooled by reports that foreign nationals are the only group who commit crimes in South Africa.

Mbeki said this during his engagement with students and diplomats at the University of South Africa (Unisa) on Wednesday, 21 September.

The former president said that there are many cases in which SA citizens have been guilty of committing crimes. Mbeki added that people guilty of crimes should be arrested irrespective of where they come from, SABC News reports.

Source: Briefly News