By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Stage 3 load shedding will be implemented at 17:30 on Saturday, State owned power utility Eskom said in a brief statement.
Eskom did not say what caused the sudden resumption of power cuts, labelling it as “another temporary setback”.
The Stage 3 cuts will continue until “further notice”, it said, adding it will give another update on Sunday.
Eskom last instituted load shedding at the end of January. Before those cuts, South Africans had enjoyed 10 months of uninterrupted electricity supply.
The utility did not expand on what particular “setback” caused the need for load shedding.
When stage 3 load shedding was announced in January, it was due to the depletion of emergency fuel reserves amid breakdowns and service delays.
Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa previously noted that the message has always been clear: load shedding was not over, and setbacks were bound to happen.
This has been evident in the recent returns to outages despite the improved performance at the utility.
Economists at the Bureau for Economic Research warned in February that the power crisis in South Africa is far from over, and the grid is walking on a knife’s edge.
It said that hourly data shows that the situation can deteriorate rapidly, and load shedding can spring back – as it now has – with very short notice.
On top of this, the economists added that, even with no load shedding or its sporadic return, the electricity grid is still constraining economic growth.
“The lack of a stable, predictable supply of electricity remains a significant brake on economic growth. If growth were to accelerate rapidly, the risk of another round of load-shedding would rise,” the BER said.