Johannesburg - Themba Limekhaya is an innovator, an entrepreneur and a pizza maker from Orange Farm in Gauteng.
His business, however, comes to a grinding halt for hours on end because of black outs and he cannot get orders out.
Limekhaya makes pizza from a shack using an electrically powered oven. His budding business loses out, though, when the power goes off.
“Load shedding is a big problem. Even, yesterday, I lost orders through load shedding. The only solution, now, is for me to go off-grid and get a wood fire oven.”
Alumo Energy, David Seinker, CEO of The Business Exchange, agrees. He says load shedding has “significant negative impact on small businesses”.
“The reality is that many small business owners cannot afford to buy generators to keep the lights on during the rolling blackouts.
“For them, three or four hours without electricity will have a significant negative financial impact.”
Limekhaya’s pizza business in the heart of one of the biggest and most populous informal settlement in the country, serves his community.
At affordable prices and delicious to boot, Limekhaya sees entrepreneurship as a way out of the financial crisis hitting South Africans.
However, when load shedding hits - with rumours it may even edge to Stage 8 this year - it is businesses such as his, that do not have the infrastructure to cope with black outs, who feel the negative impact the most.
Limekhaya says it’s a disaster for his growing business.
“Even now, I am unable to promote or advertise my pizza as much as I would like because I know load shedding is a problem. So people come here looking for food, and I look unprofessional because I can't give them what they want,” he said.
Sifiso Nyembe, who owns a hair salon, agrees: load shedding hits him and his employees hard.
“Businesses cannot keep paying their employees to be present during a power outage as, essentially, we will be paying no workers.
“How do I justify paying someone to sit around and wait for the power to come back on?”
IOL Business