Johannesburg - Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona apologised to the nation on Monday for the recent power blackouts.
“Eskom apologises to the nation for the inconvenience of the past few weeks,” Matona told journalists in Johannesburg.
“The events were completely unexpected, especially on Thursday and Friday.”
The power utility implemented stage two blackouts on Thursday and stage three on Friday. Stage one allows for up to 1000MW of the national load to be shed, stage two for up to 2000MW and stage three for up to 4000MW.
Eskom was doing everything possible to manage the outages, Matona said.
“It really pains us to have to load shed. We know the public is not pleased.”
He said a complete blackout would spell disaster for the country.
“We load shed out of responsibility... A complete blackout would be catastrophic and can take weeks to recover from.”
Sapa