JOHANNESBURG: Unable to switch on lights or heaters, cook dinner or charge their phones, South Africans are spending their mid-winter evenings plunged in darkness and low-tech living.

Power outages, known here as load shedding, intensified late last month after strikes erupted at the nation’s monopoly energy provider Eskom, leaving coal plants unable to operate or undergo maintenance.

Electricity cuts in South Africa are a notorious, years-old problem.

But the frequency of power losses — two to three times per day and lasting up to four hours at a time — is the worst since a bleak episode in December 2019, and many people are livid.

“It’s like we’re back to apartheid life, whereby we’re back to candles, paraffin stoves,” said Rebecca Bheki-Mogotho, a Johannesburg city employee.

Her comparison was with life under South Africa’s former segrationist regime, which deprived the black majority of basic infrastructure and services.

The leading economy on the continent, South Africa relies on coal to generate more than 80 percent of its electricity.

The country has plenty of coal, but most of its plants are ageing, need repair or are scheduled to be decommissioned in the coming decades.