Mbeki: SA made significant improvement from 1997 to 2007

JOHANNESBURG - Former president Thabo Mbeki says people's living standards were massively improved in the years of democracy up to 2007.

However, that trajectory was reversed between 2011 and 2015.

Mbeki was president until 2008, and Jacob Zuma took over in 2009.

Meanwhile, Mbeki has laid the blame of power cuts squarely at the Eskom door.

He says the 2008 national blackouts were not the fault of government but were deliberately engineered from inside Eskom.

Mbeki delivered a keynote address at a Freedom Day dialogue in Pretoria.