The IEC’s provincial manager, Tumelontle Thiba, tells OFM News their head office is in communication with the nation’s strained power utility in case power outages occur on Monday evening.

According to Thiba, the generators and floodlights are from Eskom and the disaster management offices of district municipal offices respectively. Load-shedding is of concern to the IEC seeing as the counting of ballots begins after the polls close and continues into the evening. So electricity is important in this case and they are hopeful that no load-shedding will occur.

On Friday evening – the eve of the special voting period – Eskom brought rolling load-shedding to a halt. The power utility had introduced power cuts as matriculants in the country began their end-of-year examinations, to much uproar from the public. What started off as stage 2 load-shedding nearly two weeks ago, rose to stage 4 this past week. On Friday Eskom said it was halting the load-shedding after generation capacity recovered sufficiently and reduced constraints on the system. The utility apologised to grade 12 learners studying for their end-of-year exams, explaining that load-shedding is a last resort for them to maintain the stability of the system.

OFM News