Tendai Ruben Mbofana
ZESA Holdings recently issued a statement announcing the shutdown of Hwange Power Station’s Unit 3 for statutory maintenance, scheduled to last forty-four days.
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At face value, this appears perfectly reasonable.
Any machinery—particularly one as massive and complex as a coal-fired power station—requires routine maintenance to ensure safety, efficiency, and reliability.
Yet, when Zimbabweans hear such announcements, what they perceive is not reassurance, but another excuse in a long list of justifications for why they must endure crippling power outages on a near-daily basis.
For almost two decades now, Zimbabweans have been subjected to one of the most persistent electricity crises on the continent.
Instead of real solutions, what they are offered are repeated explanations dressed up in bureaucratic language: “equipment breakdown,” “statutory maintenance,” “load-shedding.”
The danger of normalizing these terms is that they mask the truth.
In a properly functioning country, equipment maintenance and breakdowns do not translate to blacking out entire cities and leaving families, businesses, hospitals, and industries without power for sixteen hours or more a day.
Maintenance is routine everywhere in the world, yet it is rarely felt by ordinary citizens because governments and utilities plan ahead, invest in capacity expansion, and ensure redundancy in their energy systems.
Why should Zimbabweans suffer simply because one unit at Hwange Power Station is undergoing repairs?
Why must the shutting down of a single turbine or generator plunge whole neighborhoods into darkness?
The answer lies not in the technical realities of power generation, but in decades of neglect, mismanagement, and outright looting that have left our power sector in tatters.
Most of Zimbabwe’s electricity infrastructure dates back to the colonial era, much of it running well past its intended lifespan.
Instead of being modernized and expanded, it has been milked dry while the few attempts at investment have been tainted by opaque contracts, inflated tenders, and billions of dollars that vanish into thin air.
Zimbabwe has a national electricity demand of around 2,400 megawatts a day.
Yet, on most days, the country struggles to generate even 1,000 megawatts, with Hwange and Kariba barely able to hold together the fragile supply.
Independent Power Producers contribute only a negligible fraction.
The result is a gaping deficit that is carried directly by households and businesses.
Industries lose tens of millions of dollars each month from downtime, while small traders are forced to either shut their doors or divert scarce resources toward expensive diesel generators.
Families must cook with firewood, risk food spoilage, and see their children’s education suffer when they try to study by candlelight.
All the while, ZESA and the government continue to downplay the scale of the crisis, preferring to frame it as a temporary inconvenience rather than the long-term disaster it has become.
But let us be clear: this is not a temporary situation.
Zimbabwe has been living in rolling blackouts for nearly twenty years.
The collapse of Kariba due to low water levels, the breakdown of Hwange’s aging turbines, and the long-delayed rehabilitation projects are not random acts of misfortune.
They are the predictable results of failing to invest, plan, and manage resources with accountability.
What is most infuriating is that the government and ZESA act as if the situation is beyond their control.
It is not.
There is no natural law that dictates Zimbabwe must remain in darkness.
Countries across Africa, many of them with fewer resources than ours, have successfully expanded their energy capacity and ensured more stable supply.
Ethiopia, for instance, has aggressively invested in hydropower and now exports electricity to its neighbors, showing what strategic planning, investment, and accountability can achieve.
Its flagship project, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), was officially inaugurated on September 9, 2025, with a generation capacity of 5,150 megawatts—Africa’s largest hydroelectric facility.
This monumental investment has enabled Ethiopia not only to meet growing domestic demand but also to supply electricity to neighboring countries such as Sudan, Djibouti, and Kenya through the East African Power Pool, generating revenue while strengthening regional cooperation.
Zimbabwe, by contrast, continues to struggle with daily blackouts despite abundant natural resources, highlighting the stark consequences of mismanagement, corruption, and underinvestment in its power sector.
South Africa, despite facing its own energy challenges, has strengthened its power supply by actively involving Independent Power Producers through its Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).
Since its launch in 2011, the programme has attracted private investment, adding thousands of megawatts from wind and solar to the national grid, while distributed rooftop solar has further reduced pressure on the system.
Initiatives like the Integrated Resource Plan 2024 and hybrid power stations combining solar, wind, and battery storage demonstrate the country’s commitment to diversifying energy sources and improving reliability.
While challenges remain, South Africa’s proactive policies and investment in renewable energy contrast sharply with Zimbabwe’s mismanagement and underinvestment, showing the tangible benefits of strategic planning and accountability in achieving energy security.
Botswana, with a much smaller economy, manages to keep its lights on more reliably than Zimbabwe by implementing strategic investments and reforms in its energy sector.
While Botswana’s electricity generation capacity is approximately 890 MW, primarily from coal-fired plants, it has focused on enhancing the reliability of its power supply through infrastructure development and maintenance.
The Morupule Thermal Power Station, located in Palapye, is a key asset, contributing significantly to domestic power generation.
Despite challenges such as financial constraints and occasional power outages, Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) has prioritized grid management and maintenance to ensure a stable electricity supply.
What separates Zimbabwe from these examples is not resources or capacity, but governance.
For years, ZESA has been run like a fiefdom for political elites rather than a national utility for the public good.
Technical expertise has often been overlooked in favor of political connections or family ties, as exemplified by the appointment of Sydney Gata to lead ZESA.
Procurement has been riddled with corruption, where millions of dollars are paid upfront for equipment that never arrives.
Grand projects like the expansion of Hwange’s Units 7 and 8 were announced with great fanfare, but the addition of 600 MW has been too little to make a meaningful change to Zimbabwe’s power supply.
If Zimbabwe is serious about solving this crisis, we must stop treating it as business as usual.
This is a national emergency, one that requires immediate and bold measures.
First, there needs to be a complete overhaul of ZESA’s management.
Leadership must be appointed on merit, through transparent processes, with clear accountability for results.
The culture of impunity must end—every dollar allocated to the power sector should be publicly accounted for, and those found looting must face real consequences.
Second, there must be a genuine commitment to expanding generation capacity beyond outdated coal and hydropower.
Zimbabwe has immense potential in solar and other renewable sources, yet government policy has done little to unlock this.
Instead of throwing up bureaucratic hurdles, we should be incentivizing Independent Power Producers with favorable investment terms and ensuring that they can feed power into the grid transparently.
Equally important, the government must slash import duties and taxes on alternative energy equipment.
Right now, solar panels, batteries, and inverters remain out of reach for most ordinary citizens and small businesses because of prohibitive costs.
If duty-free imports were allowed, Zimbabweans could begin to take energy security into their own hands, reducing pressure on the grid.
Third, the government must secure reliable power imports in the short term to cushion the nation while long-term projects are implemented.
Other countries do it all the time.
There is no reason Zimbabwe should fail to import electricity from the region except for the fact that our financial credibility has been eroded by corruption and unpaid debts.
Restoring trust with regional partners requires discipline, transparency, and a serious commitment to paying our dues.
Lastly, there must be a shift in mindset.
So long as ZESA and the government continue to hide behind the language of “maintenance” and “breakdowns,” the crisis will be treated as if it were normal.
It is not.
Zimbabweans deserve to live in a country where electricity is reliable, where industries can thrive without the fear of daily shutdowns, and where children can study without being plunged into darkness.
But that will only happen when the authorities stop deflecting blame and take responsibility for decades of rot.
The shutting down of Hwange Unit 3 is not the problem.
The problem is that our country cannot withstand the temporary loss of a single unit without collapsing into darkness.
That is the true measure of failure.
Until we address the underlying corruption and incompetence that have hollowed out our energy sector, no amount of maintenance announcements will change the fact that Zimbabwe is in the dark—literally and figuratively.
