The return of Stage 2 load-shedding comes at a most inconvenient time. It comes as we fret over the surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths that already have a significant effect on our economic recovery hopes. But as unwelcome a guest as it is, it’s a reality that shouldn’t come as any surprise.

Eskom, under the stewardship of Andre de Ruyter and his executive team, is finally dealing with a maintenance backlog after years of neglect and as such our electricity grid was always set for a period of instability — despite reduced demand for its product. With this in mind, I suppose as business and other stakeholders in the SA economy we’ve come to a begrudging acceptance that our recovery will be set back by reoccurring bouts of power outages that small businesses in particular are more vulnerable to...

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