Speaking to BusinessTech, energy department spokesperson Edward Ugesi, said the idea to split South Africa into two time zones was mooted as far back as 2014, but never gained much attention because of the logistics of having to implement it. The split between the two time-zones will be along the Northern and Western Cape borders – a little further east than the 22nd east meridian, which cuts through the provinces.įor administrative purposes, the split won’t cut through the North-West or the Eastern Cape, even though western towns in this provinces are technically in the UCT+1 zone. Under the new plan, a ‘master clock’ will be created for the western times zone – ostensibly named South African West Time or SAWT – while the current master clock will continue to be held for the eastern time zone (South Africans East Time, or SAET). The SAST Master Clock is maintained at the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA) at Pretoria and is distributed publicly by an NTP Internet Time service.īecause South Africa’s land mass is stretched across two time zones (UCT+1 and UCT+2) residents in Cape Town are in fact already an hour behind those in Johannesburg, and will experience later sunsets and sunrises. It forms part of the Electric Systems and Kilowatt Observation Management Bill, which government hopes to push through ahead of Winter, when Eskom’s power grid is most vulnerable.Ĭurrently, South Africa operates on SAST – South African Standard Time – which is set two hours ahead of the Coordinated Universal Time (UCT+2). The plan is detailed in a new Government Gazette, and appears to be a combined effort by the departments of Public Enterprises, Energy, Economic Development and Trade and Industry. The Department of Trade and Industry has gazetted a new plan to split South Africa into two separate time zones, in a desperate bid to alleviate peak pressure on the country’s crumbling power grid, and reduce the burden of load shedding.
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