Power cuts are expected to continue over the weekend and into next week, Eskom said in a statement on Friday.

There was a "high possibility of load shedding over the weekend as the electricity system is extremely tight", the utility warned.

It said the planned cuts were likely to continue through next week and called on consumers to use electricity sparingly.

"All South Africans need to pull together and save electricity because every little bit of saving counts," it said.

Eskom said it was working with municipalities and regional disaster-management committees to coordinate scheduling of the power cuts.

"We hope this will assist in minimising the inconvenience caused on the roads, and improve our forewarning to electricity consumers. We are also taking into account suggestions from consumers," it said.

Eskom’s load shedding is starting to impact local websites

Eskom’s extensive country-wide load shedding schedule has started to impact on the local Internet industry with some websites now inaccessible.

Eskom’s load shedding is starting to impact many facets of the IT industry, including telecoms, Internet and online gaming.

The cellular operators have indicated that while they have systems in place to minimize the impact of any power outage, it is difficult to eliminate all the negative effects and it may further result in higher operating costs.

Internet Solutions were also recently the victim of a combined power outage and failed generator, and only quick action from the first tier ISP averted a catastrophe.

                                    Cosatu, however, said Eskom was not to blame for the crisis

"They warned the government years ago that they needed money to invest in new power stations, and applied to the government for this.

"But the government refused to provide the money, which President [Thabo] Mbeki has now admitted and apologised for," said Craven.

Because the government was set on privatising Eskom and other public utilities, and selling them off to the highest bidder, they had made the supplier inefficient.

"Cosatu consistently opposed privatisation precisely because we insisted that it must be a national service, efficiently providing secure and affordable power to the people and to industry."

Meanwhile, the acting leader of the Independent Democrats, Simon Grindrod, has called for Eskom to lure back the skills it had lost.

On Friday he cited "the loss of engineers, project managers and other highly skilled employees as one of the main reasons for the current crisis at national power supplier Eskom".

He reacted to what he called "Eskom's ridiculous statement" to the government that it must stop marketing our country as an investment destination for major industrial developments over the next five years, saying: "We are in this mess because of expensive restructuring exercises carried out at the energy supplier in recent years.

"This has led to a skills meltdown at Eskom. We in the ID believe in transformation with excellence, and it is now time to call a spade a spade. It is obvious that Eskom no longer has in its staffing structure people with the expertise and the forward-thinking ability to properly manage our nation's power supply."