Deputy President Paul Mashatile has reiterated in Parliament that South Africa will not face a grid collapse.
Mashatile said the issue of grid collapse was used as a scarecrow.
He said even now there has been a reduction in the stages of load shedding after interventions by the government.
Mashatile said they would continue to ensure they address the issue of load shedding and improve the performance of the power plants.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said the energy availability factor in some of the power stations has increased.
The government has decided to go station by station to improve their performance.
Mashatile, who was answering oral questions in the National Council of Provinces on Wednesday, said grid collapse would not happen because of the safeguards that are put in place.
“We must disabuse ourselves from this comment of grid failure. It’s not helpful. It’s almost like a scarecrow. There will be no grid failure. You know what grid failure is, we must not say these things lightly because grid failure means we are going into darkness. There is no electricity. There is nothing,” said Mashatile.
He said Ramokgopa said two days ago when the system improved nobody says anything.
But when there is load shedding he gets a lot of questions about it.
Mashatile denied that the improvement of the system was related to the burning of diesel.
He said it was related to the deal that South Africa signed with Mozambique to get 100MW.
The supply of power by Mozambique will increase to 600MW in the next six months.
Ramokgopa met with his counterpart from Mozambique last week in Pretoria where they finalised the deal.
The 100MW was going to be available immediately.
Mashatile said it was not through the burning of diesel that has led to the improvement of the system.
“It’s beyond burning diesel. If you listened to (Ramokgopa) yesterday he said ‘I am doing this deal with Mozambique because one of the things I want to do is to avoid the cost of burning diesel’,” said Mashatile.
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