South Africa's Electricity Shortage Crisis Worsens

Johannesburg, South Africa (AHN) - South Africa's power woes are spreading and have broadened into a declared national emergency. Spot outages have shut the nation's lucrative gold mines and sparked concern that the nation won't have the juice to host the upcoming football World Cup games in 2010.

Demand has increasingly exceeded supply across the nation leading to outages of up to five hours and officials on Friday outlined steps they intend to take to manage the crisis, including rationing electricity.

Although that is the longest the power cuts have lasted, the nation's leading gold and platinum mine owners shut their mines until power supplies become normal because they said they worried about a power outage trapping workers in mines.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has admitted that the nation should have paid attention to reports a few years ago that found the nation lacked enough electrical generating capacity. He admitted that it was poor planning to ignore the looming crisis.

Now critics say they fear that many of the expected 300,000 foreigners won't want to come to the World Cup if they think that they will go back to their hotel rooms and find there is no electricity.

The Minerals and Energy Ministry announced it would introduce electricity rationing as a quick fix.

The nation is the largest economy in Africa and a respected economist said that electrical shortages would curb the South Africa's economic growth.

Bloomberg news reports that Goolam Ballim, chief economist of Standard Bank Group, told it, "Power is like oxygen, it's essential for any half-modern economy.''