{"id":483633,"date":"2023-03-13T09:12:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T07:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=483633"},"modified":"2023-03-13T09:13:45","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T07:13:45","slug":"south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state-mtn-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/483633-south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state-mtn-ceo.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africa risks becoming a failed state"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita has warned that if South Africa does not act as a country to address the crises it faces, it risks becoming a failed nation-state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have time, but the time is now to act very decisively around these crisis issues that the country is facing,\u201d Mupita said.<\/p>\n

These crises are energy, logistics, crime and corruption, and youth and unemployment, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the state of disaster regulations being gazetted, the country now has a very unique opportunity to accelerate efforts to secure the resilience of critical national infrastructure such as telecommunications,\u201d stated Mupita.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our view as MTN, government and business must jointly seize this moment and act decisively to deal with these crises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mupita said that they expect sustained, elevated levels of load-shedding over the near-term.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, MTN is going to move away from only using battery backups and mobile generator teams, to deploying extensive generators into the network.<\/p>\n

Mupita is not the only one sounding the alarm.<\/p>\n

Several business leaders, including Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala, Nedbank CEO Mike Brown, Discovery CEO Adrian Gore, and Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht expressed concerns<\/a><\/strong> over the crises Mupita highlighted.<\/p>\n

Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt has said South Africa is in a real economic crisis<\/strong><\/a> that could lead to public violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in serious trouble in South Africa,\u201d Roodt said in a Business Day TV interview last month.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Data from The Outlier<\/a><\/strong> shows that South Africa has experienced 188 days of near-constant load-shedding since 6 September 2022, barring a few daytime hours of respite on a handful of Sundays.<\/p>\n

EskomSePush data show that Eskom has already implemented 1,701 hours (or 71 days) of cumulative power cuts in 2023.<\/p>\n

Vally Padayachee from the NRS Association of South Africa has warned that the country can go beyond stage 8 load-shedding if decisive steps are not taken to rectify Eskom\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

The NRS Association is involved in developing electricity supply and load-shedding specifications in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Padayachee\u2019s warning comes after Eskom\u2019s acting head of generation, Thomas Conradie, said they are revising the code of practice<\/strong><\/a>, which could extend its load-shedding schedule to stage 16.<\/p>\n

Conradie did not explicitly state that they are preparing for stage 16 but confirmed they are working on higher stages than the current peak of stage 8.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe schedules are being developed upfront so that we have a more systematic approach if required,\u201d Conradie said.<\/p>\n

He explained that it would avoid a situation where Eskom will need to \u201cjump around\u201d to reduce the load on the grid beyond stage 8.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Former Eskom executives have also warned about higher levels of load-shedding, especially as winter approaches.<\/p>\n

Former Eskom CEO Andr\u00e9 de Ruyter has warned South Africans that 2023 is going to be a tough year for load-shedding.<\/p>\n

He said South Africans should expect at least stage six power cuts, possibly worse, during winter.<\/p>\n

Eskom\u2019s former general manager of system operations, Robbie van Heerden, said South Africa would most likely go to stage 8 during winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople must realise that South Africa is in a very bad situation<\/strong><\/a>. Load-shedding will not go away. It will not stop at the end of the year, as promised by Ramaphosa,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: How much load-shedding cost MTN<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita has a dire warning for the South African government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":442464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995,18668,27,3],"tags":[34105,61891,11177,15844,181,35,51867,8977,42,1111,75060,39564,84869,12679,75908,1851,82703,84747],"class_list":["post-483633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","category-government","category-security","category-telecoms","tag-adrian-gore","tag-andre-de-ruyter","tag-dawie-roodt","tag-discovery","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-loadshedding","tag-mike-brown","tag-mtn","tag-nedbank","tag-pieter-engelbrecht","tag-ralph-mupita","tag-robbie-van-heerden","tag-shoprite","tag-sim-tshabalala","tag-standard-bank","tag-thomas-conradie","tag-vally-padayachee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}