Power was abruptly cut to large parts of South Africa Sunday and the national energy provider announced days of power blackouts in Africa's most industrialised nation. The announcement came as a surprise after positive statements from Eskom suggesting years of crippling power cuts of sometimes up to 12 hours a day may soon be over.

South Africa's Eskom will cut 3,000 megawatts of power in controlled outages, known locally as loadshedding, from 5:30 p.m. (1530 GMT) on Saturday until further notice after a "temporary setback", the power utility said.