ZESA restores power nationwide after fault triggers four-hour blackout 

HARARE – Zimbabwe experienced a nationwide power blackout lasting nearly four hours on Monday, which power utility ZESA Holdings blamed on a “major electrical fault” on a key transmission line.

In a public notice, ZESA said the outage began at 6.24PM when a fault occurred on the Warren-Alaska 330kV line, cutting interconnections with neighbouring regional utilities.

Local generation was subsequently lost “due to voltage instability and under frequency,” the notice said.

Restoration efforts commenced at 7PM, drawing supplies from South Africa’s Eskom, Kariba Power Station, Mozambique’s Hydro Cabora Bassa and Hwange Units 1, 2 and 3.

By 10PM, ZESA said power had been “successfully restored to most of our bulk supply points across the country.”

Technical teams remained on the ground working to restore and synchronise the remaining units at Hwange Power Station, as well as to conduct repairs at Warren Substation, which supplies parts of Harare, the utility said.

“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused,” ZESA said.

The outage is the latest in a string of nationwide blackouts to hit Zimbabwe’s grid in recent years. On July 3 last year, a system disturbance at 2.11PM knocked out generation at both Kariba and Hwange power stations and severed interconnections with South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique simultaneously.

A similar nationwide blackout struck in December 2024, which ZESA attributed to an imbalance on international power connectors.

The recurrence of grid-wide failures tied to regional interconnection losses, which has national security implications, raises questions over ZESA’s handling of the national power system.