The High Court Gauteng Division on Monday began the case brought in by the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and other political and civic organisations, which argues the government and power utility Eskom has violated basic human rights by implementing load shedding that has knocked critical areas of the economy such as hospitals.
The matter is set to be heard from Monday to Thursday this week, was adjourned to Wednesday.
Advocate Bruce Dyke, representing ActionSA, said the plea from ActionSA and other organisations hinged around the provision of electricity to 85 police stations, 93 hospitals, and 23 000 schools badly affected by load shedding.
“The Ministry of Health has actually acknowledged that load shedding has impacted public hospitals," Dyke told the court presided over by Justice Norman Davies.
Dyke submitted before the court that the responsibility for the claims needed to be allocated to either the state or the power utility for not taking appropriate action to safeguard citizens from the impact of load shedding, leading to either deaths or complications in hospitals or critical areas of the economy.
Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, representing the Health and Allied Workers Indaba Trade Union (Haitu), outlined six sectors, including health care, education, security, water supply and small business, among others, severely affected by load shedding.
"The mortality rate in hospitals shoots up when there are power cuts. Someone dies when there are power cuts. This is unplanned. 80% of South Africans use public hospitals," Ngcukaitobi said.
“There is impact on national security as we all know, telecommunication companies cannot recharge batteries at cellphone towers when load shedding is at stage 4. ”
Telecommunication companies had to spend in excess of R2bn in backup mechanisms, which compromised the security of the country. When load shedding happens at night, security of hospitals and police stations was also compromised.
Ngcukaitobi said load shedding had cost the economy R338 billion in the 10 years between 2009 and 2019, R1.2 trillion between 2020 and 2022, and the tally for 2023, the worst year for load shedding frequencies and duration, was yet to be tallied.
An hour of stage 6 load shedding costs the economy at least R500 million, while a whole day at that high stage costs R4bn to the economy, Ngcubaitoki said.
Dyke said the relief sought to separate the critical institutions from the grid was, as admitted by Eskom, possible though it required money and time to exempt the particular institutions from the grid.
Justice Davies questioned whether the interim relief, if it was to be over a period of five years, would not amount to interim relief but a semi-permanent solution until alternative measures were taken by Eskom and the government.
Ngcukaitobi said the government and Eskom were liable for the damage caused by load shedding as they never followed the 1999 White Paper on Electricity provision, which indicated that by 2007, there would be an imbalance in the generation and supply of electricity, which was largely ignored as no action was taken until about 2015. At that time, the Medupi power plant was commissioned and in 2017, when the Kusile Power plant was also commissioned.
"We are dealing with who precisely should take responsibility. There are legal obligations that the Constitutional Court has ruled on in the Vaal matter that has not been adhered to. The primary relief sought is on alternatives and interim relief on these institutions. We are asking for an order to have interim measures put in place, a recalibration of the evidence before us," Ngcukaitobi said.
The matter resumes on Wednesday until Thursday.
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