On April 10 2008, Eskom, SA’s state-owned energy company, released the first national and mandatory ‘Load shedding’ schedule.

Load shedding, then a relatively unknown term is a technical term invented by ANC politicians and technocrats for regular and predetermined rolling electricity blackouts. What was being disguised, in clever English, as a strategic approach to manage an energy crisis that had been looming for almost a decade already, load shedding was and continues to be electricity rationing. A stop gap measure that provides temporary relief to an energy grid not designed to handle the needs of the population it serves, literally crumbling in the hands of poor policy decisions and even worse management...