In the wake of this week's blackout in areas east of Johannesburg, energy and construction experts have warned of darker days to come. As thousands of homes and businesses from Bedfordview to Germiston were plunged into darkness during this week's cold snap, the Ekurhuleni metro pointed fingers at Eskom.
Meanwhile, the eThekwini municipality in Durban took responsibility for the power failures in several suburbs, saying staff shortages were to blame for the outages.
Des Muller, the lead developer for power infrastructure at construction company Group Five, has focused his attention on all municipalities around the country, arguing they were lagging behind in terms of technical asset management.
Blackouts have been on the cards for a number of years, argues Muller, and consumers should expect more of the same in the years ahead, while the economy can also expect to suffer as a result. According to some estimates, large-scale outages are believed to cost the economy between R2-billion and R8-billion a year.
"In the power sector there are no sudden surprises. It's predictable and things are working out exactly the way we anticipated," he said.
This has little to do with "CCTV cameras being installed on the motorway", scoffed Muller, as Eskom tried to argue this week. Most of the infrastructure in those areas was installed two or three decades ago. Today they are being used beyond their design specifications. "Inevitably you will encounter failure," he said.
In a city like Johannesburg, where the city's skyline is crowded out with cranes and scaffolding, reflecting the enormous amount of development that's under way, it was incumbent on municipalities to play catch-up.
"Municipalities earn a lot in revenue, in rates and taxes, from all these developments but they are not keeping up with the infrastructure. That's evident with your traffic jams. It's the very same with electricity blackouts."
Laying more cables to feed into the existing infrastructure is not the answer, Muller argues. Municipalities must first upgrade the infrastructure that supplies the electricity and break the bar on what is required to maintain them. Otherwise, power failures were here to stay, right through the 2010 soccer extravaganza.
"We've known about the electricity crisis for some time," he said. "The municipalities must also know that the development is going to continue. We've got to start working together to sort it out."
Otherwise, South Africa's power crisis would change little between now and 2014.
And only then would we be in a position to address power generation capacity, explained Muller. But unless municipalities address the problem of transmission, the blackouts and outages of today would remain a feature of tomorrow.
Generating capacity was only one side of the coin. The other was transmission.
"Eskom supplies power to a certain point and then it is taken over by municipalities," explained Muller, adding that consumers were at the mercy of the local authorities, and not Eskom - contrary to public perception. Hence, consumers all over the country can brace themselves for a harsh winter, Muller warned, characterised by "a deficit of capacity" where demand would exceed Eskom's supply.
In a bid to curb high demand, Eskom has embarked on a number of interesting initiatives.
One such is the infamous "brown nights", whereby some areas are blacked out in order to provide light to other areas. Industry has also come under Eskom's conservation spotlight.
While Muller hailed the moves, he said it was inexcusable that a country with such a large population as ours should be without power and plunged into an energy crisis. "What we have is an abuse of power," he argued.
While electricity had traditionally been fairly cheap and readily available, the latest dilemma was not helped by "waste which has led to our demise", he said.
The consumer clearly has a role to play. Bad habits in homes that host an array of inefficient gadgets and appliances were not helping the energy problem, according to Muller. A lot of power could be saved "through the efficient use of electricity, by developing new technologies or by getting people's habits to change".
However, change on the part of the consumer or municipalities would not come quickly enough.
"We are looking at a five-year haul," predicts Muller, dotted by dark months of discontent.Bored employees at Eastgate's Le Look beauty salon, Beatrice Nkhuwa (beauty therapist) and Ida Konde (hairdresser), do each other's nails in the dark this week.Photograph: Cara Viereckl