The power situation in Zimbabwe has been very dire in the past few weeks. ZESA has announced that they expect to ease load-shedding soon as they are close to reaching a deal with Eskom- the South African power utility.

ZESA Holdings Chief Executive Officer Patrick Chivaura made remarks to this effect in an interview with Sunday News:

RBZ paid US$890 000 to Eskom for the liquidation of the debt that we have.
Eskom asked us to meet certain conditions before the resumption of power supply to the country.

I am happy to announce that we have met the conditions and we are looking forward to providing a bank guarantee by Tuesday.
This will initialise the process of power supply by Eskom. I am very confident that the deal will materialise by next week.

Once the deal materialises, we are expecting it to significantly reduce load-shedding. We will have power for more hours than we are having now.
We are also engaging HCB to see if we can liquidate their debt and also to see if we can import more electricity from them.

We owe them a lot of money and we want to see how best we can settle that debt and start getting more power from them.

Without adequate power, everyone is struggling

Without enough power, everyone is struggling. Households have had to make do with expensive gas, firewood and darkness. Home industries such as those in Mbare and Glen View have now resorted to working in the evening when the power comes back on.

Mobile Network Operators have also been under pressure. Econet’s entire network went down a few weeks ago. POTRAZ has called for ZESA to prioritise the ICT sector but there is simply not enough power to prioritise.