S. Africa Considers Declaring State Of Emergency Over Eskom Crisis

The two-day strategy meeting (lekgotla) of the ANC's National Executive Committee backed the proposal to declare a national state of emergency over continued power outages that have been crippling South Africa's economy.

• President Cyril Ramaphosa revealed that the government has been discussing imposing measures similar to those that were in place during the COVID-19 pandemic and argued that there was "general agreement" that this was a necessary step.
• Ramaphosa unveiled the plan in his closing address at the ruling party NEC's lekgotla, an annual strategy meeting of ruling party executives, which comes ahead of a Cabinet gathering to be convened Wednesday.
• The NEC asked the presidency to "co-ordinate all processes" and speed up the estimated 18-24 months needed for Eskom to end load-shedding. Declaring a state of emergency would allow for shortening the normal procurement procedures related to the maintenance and refurbishment of power stations.
• This year is currently on track to be worse than the record-breaking 2022 in terms of rolling blackouts, with power rationing exerting an increasing impact on South African households and businesses.