South Africa

This is for all of you living up in Jozi. I found this article featured prominently on Yahoo! News yesterday about the supposed blackouts "plaguing" Joburg - "Blackouts plague Africa's richest city". I found the tone of the article very negative and to be honest, a bit hysterical. I would really like to know what you guys in Joeys actually think about this - is it such a big problem or is the writer exaggerating a bit to sell some print? A quote to get the ball rolling :

Power cuts in Africa's richest city are not just an inconvenience to revelers. They are also feeding fears that Johannesburg's flaws and blemishes will prove an embarrassment in five years' time when thousands of soccer fans descend on South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. City Power, Johannesburg's public electricity distribution utility, blames the outages on the theft of cables for scrap and the fact that most of its network is more than 30 years old.

 

South Africa's power problems are compounded by a supply crunch, as demand fast overtakes capacity in a country long an over-producer with some of the world's cheapest sources of power. Analysts warn that tightening supply could hit growth.