Cyril Ramaphosa has always been the ‘glass half-full’ type, but his latest attempts to take an optimistic view of what’s happening with our load shedding situation won’t get many South Africans onside.

The president wrote in his weekly newsletter on Monday that the country is ‘making progress’ with a multitude of challenges, including that of energy shortages.

The announcement comes after SA endured a six-day period of load shedding, which is believed to have secretly reached ‘Stage 6’ in some regions.

The latest bout of power cuts packed a particularly galling punch particularly on Friday, when load shedding was suspended thanks to a request from Parliament. The ‘one rule for them’ sentiment was particularly strong amongst the general population, and Eskom fell further out of the good books following a nightmare week.

However, that hasn’t stopped Ramaphosa from defending the state-owned entity. He believes the ‘pace of reform’ at Eskom is increasing, and he asked South Africans to ease-up on the cynicism. Erm, good look with that one Cyril…

“When times are tough, it is easy to be pessimistic. It is understandable that citizens are frustrated by the slow pace of change, and feel that our problems are intractable. We’re making progress in resolving many of our challenges, from corruption to energy shortages to the obstacles that discourage investment. The pace of reform is picking up.”

“Cynical though some among us may be, let the progress we are making in overcoming the immediate crisis motivate us to do even better. Throughout the course of our history we have had setbacks and false starts. But our resilient nature allowed us to weather many storms. Let us nurture the green shoots of progress.”

Later this week, I will be travelling to the United Kingdom to attend the #G7 Leaders Summit.

We have been invited as a guest country together with South Korea, Australia and India.
https://t.co/qfN93Y33M7 pic.twitter.com/e7sO2fW94u— Cyril Ramaphosa 

 #StaySafe (@CyrilRamaphosa) June 7, 2021