The president further said that those found to be responsible for the alleged sabotage would face the law. 

“The sabotage came at a time when we had all the problems and just added to the many other problems, but on its own it would have not really sort of sunk the system. But I think it is also important for all of us to note that there are certain people within the system who take it upon themselves to go and switch off certain instruments and that finally led us to losing so many megawatts,” Ramaphosa told a media conference in Johannesburg.

He said he had urged Eskom management to speed up its investigations.

"Anyone who would go out and disconnect a particular instrument and lead to the loss of 2000 MW over a 10 hour period cannot be involved in any other activity other than sabotage.”

He said decisive actions would be taken against those who were responsible, and they would be dealt with by the criminal justice system. 

“Decisive action, in the end, will mean that people who are responsible for this will have to be charged, people will have to face charges, go to court and that obviously has to be dealt with by your criminal justice system, the prosecuting processes. That is a decisive action that obviously needs to be taken in that regard through those institutions that have been set up to do precisely that,” said Ramaphosa.

The country has been rocked by a series of power cuts, which escalated from stage 2 to stage 6 load-shedding on Monday. Economists have raised concerns about the impact of the load-shedding on the country’s economic growth, with small businesses taking a severe hit. 

Ramaphosa cut short a working trip to Egypt to address media and the nation about the rolling blackouts following widespread criticism that he had left South Africa in the midst of a national crisis. 

African News Agency (ANA)