‘South Africa faces an energy crisis’- Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill Lewis reflects on year

Hill-Lewis published a “Mayoral Minute” on Friday, an age-old tradition where previous Mayors of Cape Town would publish an annual review at the end of each year. 

Hill-Lewis, who occupied the office as mayor for a full year after the DA retained the Cape Metro during the local government elections last year, admits “the challenges in our city are immense and time passes quickly.

“One year in, the mission remains clear: We are building a city in which all can experience the real hope of a future that is safer, cleaner, and more prosperous,” the mayor said. 

Hill-Lewis added the social, economic, and political context in which the city government operates is characterised by high levels of poverty, unemployment, economic sluggishness, the enduring legacy of apartheid social planning, and extensive national political uncertainty.

“Underscoring these challenges is the impact of the worst power cuts in the history of the country, with Eskom implementing record load shedding for more than 200 days of the year,” he said. 

The city has previously said it has protected customers from more than 60% of Eskom’s load shedding or 1 700 hours of the 3 000 hours of load shedding.

On Saturday, Eskom announced a breakdown of five generating units overnight, forcing the power utility to implement stage two load shedding until further notice. 

“This translates into tens of billions of rands’ worth of value lost to the local economy each year. At the time of writing, Eskom was implementing Stage 5 load-shedding nationally, meaning that South Africans are without power for 7,5 hours a day, split into three separate 2.5-hour blocks of time,” he said. 

Hill-Lewis added Cape Town’s Steenbras hydroelectric facility had become a shining light in the fight against load shedding.

“Thanks to years of excellent and ongoing maintenance and management, the facility is the best performing power station in the country today and can protect city customers from two stages of load-shedding some of the time and one stage of load-shedding almost all of the time, safeguarding R150 million in value for each day of load shedding,” he said. 

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Hill-Lewis said Eskom’s implementation of regular Stage 3 and Stage 4 load shedding (sometimes rising to Stage 5 and 6) means Cape Town still experiences significant economic damage, which comes at the cost of jobs.

“Ending load shedding will be the biggest stimulus for the local economy, and this has been a central feature of our governance programme this year,” he stressed.