JOHANNESBURG - Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has assured South Africans that power cuts will be drastically reduced by the end of the year.
Ramokgopa says 6,000 megawatts of additional power will be procured by December.
These promises come amid increased concerns that the country may be plunged into Stage 8 power cuts for the first time this winter.
READ: Electricity minister says it 'does not look possible' to end load-shedding this year
"We're going to see significantly reduced stages of load-shedding -- the levels of intensity -- I'm more than confident about that," the minister said.
"Once we get to do all of these interventions, like I said importing from Mozambique as an example, the issues around accelerating procurement of emergency power, I will be able to aggregate what are those megawatts that are possible."
Ramokgopa said by December, more megawatts would have been added to the grid.
"The measure of our ability to end load-shedding is not necessarily on summer conditions, it's really on winter conditions and 4,000 megawatts will still not be sufficient at the current efficiency of the units.
"It's not going to take you completely out of load-shedding and that's why there have to be additional units that must come on stream from Medupi," he said.