Water supply, economic activity under threat as Eskom struggles to supply power

South Africa's State-owned electricity company Eskom continued implementing rolling blackouts on Tuesday as its crippled generating units struggled to supply enough power in a crisis likely to further hurt the ailing economy. In its latest statement Eskom said it was implementing "stage 2" load-shedding until 9 am on Tuesday morning, which effectively involves suppressing 2 000 MW of demand at a given time to avoid collapsing the national grid, after applying "stage 4" rotational powercuts which require taking 4 000 MW of demand off the grid for about 14 hours on Monday.