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The national load-shedding stage right now, your area's published cut times from Eskom, and the separate load-reduction hours that run whatever the stage.
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No national load shedding
Load reduction still runs 05:00 to 09:00, 17:00 to 22:00, whatever the stage.
Right now
No national load shedding.
This is the national stage only, and it is not the whole story here — read the next section.
Read .
Load reduction is not load shedding
Soweto is billed directly by Eskom, so Eskom's own schedule is the one that applies here — not City Power's. Two different things switch the power off. Load shedding is national: Eskom publishes one stage for the whole country, and when a stage is declared each area is cut on a rota. Load reduction is local: Eskom cuts overloaded township feeders at fixed hours to stop transformers failing, and it runs whether or not the country is load shedding.
The area list is Eskom's own, with Eskom's own spellings, so you can check the same name on Eskom's page. Picking an area asks Eskom directly — nothing about your area is stored here. Some areas are in Eskom's list with no times against them; picking one of those says so plainly rather than leaving you guessing.
Eskom cuts specific overloaded feeders in high-density areas so mini-substations and transformers do not fail and take the neighbourhood out for days. Eskom says it is applied where illegal connections and electricity theft have pushed a local network past what its equipment can carry, and that five of the nine provinces are now clear of it — only Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal are still on the programme. Soweto is in Gauteng.
Eskom publishes which block is cut on which day as a monthly file. Blocks rotate, so the day matters:
Copied from Eskom’s own file. Areas move between blocks between months, and some appear in more than one block, so this says your area is on the programme — not which hours you get.
Source: , checked 2 September 2026.
Eskom’s list has no entry under these names, so they are not in the picker above. This is what it carries near each one.
Eskom contact centre
If your power is off outside the load-reduction hours and there is no load shedding, report it as a fault — a cut nobody planned will not clear on its own. The same number works on WhatsApp: Eskom says to save 08600 37566 to your phone and message its assistant there, which gives you a reference number without holding on the line. Have your account or meter number, your pole number and your address ready.