Load-shedding could switch South Africans off the ANC

South Africans are experiencing worsening blackouts as winter hits and the crisis is fuelling demands for political change in Africa's most-advanced economy.

Wiseman Bambatha was indulging in wishful thinking when he named his business Goodhope upholstery.

Mr Bambatha re-conditions sofas and chairs in a dingy, one-room workshop in the sprawling Khayelitsha township on the edge of Cape Town.

But for hours on end, his battered, electric sewing machine sits idle. The power is off in Khayelitsha for eight or 10 hours almost every day. In South Africa they call it load-shedding.

Orders are not being met, customers are angry.

Mr Bambatha grimaces and its his business is hanging by a thread. It is a story being replayed across the country.

In an already dysfunctional economy, with half of all young adults unemployed, load-shedding is a jobs killer.

"The government has been promising us a better life for years," says Mr Bambatha, surveying his potholed street, and a vista of corrugated shacks beyond. "Tell me, where is it":[]}