A power failure that blacked out large areas of Cape Town on Wednesday left MPs attending a National Assembly debate in the dark when Parliament’s back-up generators failed to kick in.
South Africa’s premier institution was without power for about 30 minutes.
When it was restored, and MPs back in their benches, Speaker Baleka Mbete said the Department of Public Works would be asked to explain why the emergency generators had not worked.
”We have called for a detailed report [from the department] on this matter, and will table this to the House, as well as to the nation, that must be very worried when they hear Parliament has been immobilised by a power failure,” she said.
The power cut forced a rescheduling of business in the House, which was set to sit until about 9pm on Wednesday, its last day of business this year.
The power failure was the second to hit Cape Town in a week.
Eskom national spokesperson Fani Zulu said the cut followed a veld fire in the Wellington area under a 400-kilovolt line linking Cape Town to the national electricity grid.
The fire caused a severe dip in voltage on the line shortly before 3pm.
”The line went into protective mode, which did not allow power to come through in that strip of line,” he said.
Koeberg nuclear power station, which supplies the bulk of the Western Cape’s electricity at this time of year, also registered the anomaly, went into protective mode and shut itself down.
The transmission line was reopened half-an-hour later, and from that point on all lines into the city were ”running optimally again”, feeding it with power from the national grid rather than from Koeberg.
Koeberg itself would take at least 12 hours to get back on line.
Zulu said areas affected by the cut were the Cape Town city centre, several of the northern suburbs, and the towns of Caledon, Hermanus, Kleinmond, Bredasdorp and Cape Agulhas.
Last week’s power cut was caused by a fault in transmission from Koeberg, which resulted in an automatic shutdown of the only reactor in operation at the time.
Cape Town metro spokesperson Charles Kadalie said at 5pm that power had been restored to all areas of the city, though some individual consumers might need their prepaid electricity meters reset. — Sapa