Large parts of Cape Town were plunged into darkness on Monday evening, with the metro saying that a transformer had tripped and could not be restored due to network instability.

In addition to being South Africa’s legislative capital, Cape Town is one of Africa’s most internationally recognisable tourism cities.

Features like Table Mountain, the Cape Peninsula, Robben Island, the V&A Waterfront, beaches, and the nearby Winelands give it a strong global tourism brand.

“A major unplanned area fault or infrastructure trip has caused a widespread power outage across Cape Town’s northern and western suburbs this evening,” an earlier status update from city officials said.

“Because the blackout hit both City of Cape Town and Eskom customers simultaneously across a vast geographic area, it points to a significant high-voltage transmission line trip or a primary substation failure.”

The list of affected areas reporting outages included: Parklands, Sandown, Big Bay, Greater Table View, and Blouberg in the Western Suburbs.

In the Northern Suburbs, there were reports from Durbanville, Edgemead, Plattekloof, Burgundy Estate, Parow South, Kraaifontein, and Goodwood.

“Technical teams are investigating the root cause to isolate the fault and begin routing power back to the affected networks.”

In its official statement on the outage, the City of Cape Town assured that all teams were attending to the issue as a matter of urgency.

Officials advised people to disconnect sensitive appliances at the wall to protect them from potential power surges when the grid is re-energised.

Cape Town recently postponed a 10-hour maintenance outage affecting a large area to October. The planned interruption will now happen from 20:00 on 10 October until 06:00 on 11 October.

It was previously scheduled for 26 September, which was already an alternative date for maintenance originally planned for 19 September 2026.

“The City previously communicated about planned critical electricity upgrades for Muizenberg, Clovelly, Sun Valley and surrounding areas that was scheduled for 19 September 2026,” the metro said.

“This work was postponed and has now been incorporated into the planned maintenance scheduled for Saturday, 10 October 2026.”

Source: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/669604-one-of-south-africas-most-important-cities-plunged-into-darkness.html