With South Africa enduring record power outages, the government has given assurances that the electricity grid won’t be allowed to collapse, but, The Daily Maverick reports, increasing numbers of businesses are preparing for that very eventuality. Mining and telecommunications companies, retailers and private hospitals are spending millions of rand on batteries, solar panels and generators to safeguard their operations against a potential outage that could last anything from days to weeks and, Eskom itself says, “would be catastrophic,” with a risk of looting, vandalism and public unrest.
