Besides being neighbours, South Africa and Botswana have another thing in common: electricity problems.

But South Africa’s electricity issues are more entrenched and crippling than Botswana’s, which in recent days came to a head. At midnight on 8 May, Botswana suffered a countrywide electricity blackout, leaving many households and businesses without electricity.

The Botswana Power Corporation (BPC), a state-owned company responsible for electricity generation, transmission and distribution, blamed the blackout on a “grid disturbance”, the cause of which is unknown.

The “disturbance” affected a transmission line connecting Botswana to South Africa, and caused a total breakdown of units at the coal-fired Morupule Power Station, which supplies most of Botswana’s electricity.

The units were later restarted and taken online, a process that can take days. Botswana imposed power cuts, and homes and businesses did not have electricity for up to eight hours a day.

Botswana last had occasional power cuts in 2022 — for the first time since 2015.

SA import plans

The latest bout of electricity problems might have an effect on South Africa’s plan to ease blackouts during the high-demand winter season. After a month-long tour of Eskom power stations and meetings with its executives, the electricity minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has come up with plans to limit blackouts during winter.

One strategy proposed by Ramokgopa involves importing electricity from Botswana and Mozambique, to boost megawatts (MW) available to South Africa during the more than 90 days of winter.

South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique have a long history of supplying each other with any excess electricity they generate. To supply electricity to each other, their respective state-owned enterprises enter into power purchase agreements (PPAs), which can run from five to 20 years.

At least 1,000MW — enough to power 750,000 homes — has been earmarked to come from Botswana and Mozambique, but the latter will have to provide most of it.

This electricity could be available to South Africa in less than six months, as the mineral resources and energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, has issued a ministerial determination for the electricity import programme. However, this still requires a go-ahead from the energy regulator, Nersa.

An official close to the South African government’s winter rolling blackouts plan told Daily Maverick that, even if Botswana could no longer provide electricity to South Africa, Mozambique would be able to.

“There are additional areas where Eskom can get power. It has already concluded a PPA with the Cahora Bassa system [based in Mozambique and generating electricity from hydropower] for the additional supply of 400MW,” said the official, who did not want to be named as the electricity import programme had not been finalised.

The official said cross-border power purchases from neighbouring countries were a “small feature” of the winter plan.

The “crucial parts” of the plan include burning more diesel to run Eskom’s open-cycle gas turbines; focusing on Eskom’s five worst-performing power stations (Tutuka, Kendal, Majuba, Duvha and Matla) to improve performance by ramping up maintenance; remotely switching off geysers in households: and exempting national key points from power cuts.

Countries that have power purchase agreements and a history of providing each other with electricity can choose to renege on the agreements if their energy needs change at the eleventh hour — as in the case of Botswana. South Africa and Botswana have been sharing electricity for many years, but South Africa has not given Botswana electricity during the latest crisis.

An Eskom spokesperson said not giving electricity to Botswana was because of South Africa’s own recent problems with Stage 6 blackouts. 

A rescue supply nearby?

Eskom has been selling electricity to Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini and Zimbabwe for decades through PPAs with the neighbouring countries.

In Botswana’s case, the country gets some electricity from South Africa via Zimbabwe. Eskom’s Matimba Power Station and the Spitskop substation in Limpopo provide power to Zimbabwe. Eskom has an agreement to supply Zimbabwe with 100MW, which is then exported on to Botswana. Botswana also gets power from other southern African countries such as Zambia via Eskom’s transmission network.

Eskom started providing electricity to other countries because South Africa had an electrification rate that was among the highest in Africa.

Eskom’s operations and power stations were once voted the best in the world for engineering excellence and efficiency.

South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Botswana can get electricity from the Southern African Power Pool, an intergovernmental forum focusing on energy problems in Africa. Southern African countries pool the surplus electricity they generate and it can be drawn and used by the forum’s member countries. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper which is available countrywide for R29.