Two further suspicious incidents likened to sabotage have occurred at Eskom power stations on Thursday 19 May and Friday 20 May.

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordan told Parliament that on Friday morning, officials at Hendrina Power Station in Mpumalanga were unable to start up unit five and upon inspection found that during the night copper bars on the unit’s generator had been removed, and reactor earth bars, had also been removed.

This incident comes after Eskom had confirmed an act of sabotage at the Tutuka Power Station earlier in the week.

A cable had been severed as the power station was finalizing preparations to return Unit 5 to service.

On the same day, a control air pipe supplying the turbine systems had been cut with a power tool and partly removed.

In his department’s budget vote, Gordhan told Parliament: “Eskom is taking urgent steps to improve the performance of generation. Daily production and oversight meetings are held to hold power station management accountable for performance. An operations excellence initiative is also in place which to identify the major causes of underperformance and to make improvements. At selected power stations war rooms will be set up to ensure that production challenges get tackled in a systematic way.”