Keeping the lights on is not going to be any quick fix

The old saying “one swallow doesn’t make a summer” seems appropriate after Eskom announced that it is dragging us back to stage 4 load shedding after a lower stage lull.

The cynical might say that the ANC pulled out all the stops (or made sure the comrades didn’t pull out the plugs) to ensure that there was electricity around the EFF’s national shutdown last week, in an effort to nullify one aspect of the protest, which was about load shedding.

ALSO READ: Here’s your load shedding schedule for the weekend

At the same time, the unaccustomed brightness enabled our newly appointed minister of electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, to conduct oversights to power stations where he could claim, innocently, that the power crisis was “technical” and not due to corruption.

To his credit, he did row back on that absurd remark – but not before his supporters were painting him as the Patron Saint of Amperes.

There were also many suggestions that the departure of Eskom CEO André de Ruyter had led to the recovery of the power utility.

ALSO READ: How Eskom’s rolling blackouts broke us

Yet, as has now become apparent, De Ruyter was not the spanner in the works and keeping the lights on in South Africa is not going to be any quick fix. The light at the end the tunnel hasn’t stopped flickering.