The governing party said it plans to create more meetings to allow the public to directly engage public representatives on issues of energy. The party has been under growing pressure from people affected by regular power cuts for almost two decades.

Political analyst Asanda Ngoasheng says the dialogue was just a front, according to a report by SABC News.

"We are at a point where load-shedding has become a national crisis in terms of the economy and the human impact, and our government’s answer, instead of building and developing a real solution, is to have yet another dialogue, which really doesn’t make sense and is highly inappropriate.

"In fact, I would be very upset if the government was canvassing for my opinions 20 years after the problem was known about and nothing was done about it."

Another political analyst, Sanusha Naidoo, says the ANC does not need a dialogue to understand how South Africans are affected by the energy crisis.

"Even if you want to understand what the frustrations are, you just have to look around you in society, look around in terms of people’s frustrations, look around you in terms of social media. I mean, these are things you can’t keep telling the public, 'we're gonna get there'.

"The problem is, we are not sure when we are getting there or if we gonna get there, so I’m a bit confused, if not frustrated, that you are having another consultation. This doesn’t mean that you are solving the problem."

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