voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. it is going to be a cold, dark night for many south africans, with stage 6 load shedding announced... south africa is sinking into darkness, its crumbling power system no longer able to keep the lights on. the poorest here hit hardest. after 20, 25 years...

you're going to have to close down. yes. the power crisis is the result of decades of mismanagement and massive corruption, criminal gangs ready to kill anyone who tries to stop the looting. i was shaking badly. i was literally lying like this and i started gasping for air. a mixture of cyanide and sodium arsenite. today, south africa still gets almost all its power from burning coal. it's a lethal addiction. it's killing us. this coal is killing us. the answer, to many, is a green revolution. but can western money and pressure help south africa embrace renewable energy? or is the rot here simply too deep? it's very depressing. it's very concerning. our country is in a

serious, dark place. stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented until further notice. it says that stage 6 will be implemented at 8pm tonight until 5am. how did it come to this? south africa, the continent's great economic powerhouse, is in deep trouble, long daily power cuts injohannesburg and across the country. dawn, and the traffic lights are still not working. this is alexandra township, a poor neighbourhood on the edge ofjohannesburg. every day here, the power goes out, sometimes for four hours, sometimes for eight or more. officially, it's called load shedding, which sounds almost helpful, almost pleasant.

but the truth is that these power cuts are having a devastating impact in a country with a stagnant economy and soaring unemployment. and it's particularly in poor neighbourhoods like this one that the effects are being felt the most. suzeke mousa has run this bar for 25 years. we don't have money because of the power, because of the electricity. you can see now it's dark. are you going to survive in your business? i don't think so. the power shortage is taking the business out. it must be stressful. very, very, very stressful. bery, very stressful. —— very, very stressful. the cash transfer business next door is on the ropes, too. we sit more than sixl hours doing nothing. it's our salaries. if we don't work, i we don't get paid. essentially, this economy

has ground to a halt because we cannot provide factories, industry with electricity that's needed to produce. that has a direct impact on poor people who lose jobs, who cannot work, who cannot earn money. and poverty kills. poverty leads to young people not getting the education they deserve and so forth and so forth. at that level, i think this is treason. why treason? well, that's what we're going to try to find out. we're just heading out ofjohannesburg now and almost immediately, we are in coal country. you can see the coal—fired power stations on the horizon and you can smell the coal, too. now, in theory, this huge industry is supposed to be quietly transitioning to renewables, to solar and wind.

south africa has huge resources of both. but in practice, that transition is proving very difficult and very dangerous. we're heading to a town called emalahleni. the word itself means "place of coal". if you want to understand south africa's energy crisis, this is a good place to start. the town is surrounded by mines and by criminal gangs fighting for a slice of the coal industry. with us in the car, a local guide wary of being identified, so we're coming just to the edge here of — of what is an illegal mine, an illegal coal mine? yeah. i'm just going to go around the corner here. is that 0k? we're told there are at least 60 so—called black sites in this region where coal is stolen or traded illegally. what's extraordinary

is quite how brazen it is. it's happening every day out in the open, in daylight. even at night, we hear gunshots. gunshots. even they are fighting amongst themselves. the different gangs? yes. we need to be careful, then. yes. because there's so much money at stake... yes. ..that they will kill for it. they'll do that. let's see if we can try and talk to one of the truck drivers with the coal, once they've left this area. is it quite a dangerous business to be involved in? yeah, sometimes it is because you don't know whether the mine is illegal or legal. and then, you take your truck to that mine only to find out that that mine is illegal. localjournalists investigating the gangs run huge risks. it really is a brutal province for anybody who wants to expose the truth. a gangster kind of economy. yeah, definitely.

life is cheap in this country. you can hire hit men for 10,000 rand — that's $1i00. so, the system is, ithink, rotten to the core. and dangerous? yeah, absolutely. but stolen coal is only part of a much bigger problem. spread across this province are a dozen coal—fired power plants. they look like ships that have run aground. we're now driving to one named tutuka. a huge plant. but today, it's barely functioning, brought to its knees by years of mismanagement, looting and sabotage — like this fire caught on camera at a nearby plant. the sort of scams that have been going on at power stations like this one range from pretty basic fraud — for instance, inflating the price of simple protective gear by up to 800 times —

to much more complex things like sabotage, so jamming key pumping stations and also putting rocks in the coal supply to damage the whole system. and then, of course, you have to bring in new contractors to fix things with more inflated prices. tutuka is such a lucrative target for criminal gangs that the last plant manager wore body armour to work. his successor is hoping he can manage without. so, you're happy about your security? 0k. look, i don't think... yeah. can we not go there? it's a serious question, though. i mean, your predecessor wore a bulletproofjacket because he was so concerned about the criminality here, but you're not. you think that's been resolved? erm... i'm not worried.

at this stage, there's nothing substantial for me to get worried. so, it is business. i'm focusing on recovering the station. but the dangers here are real. we've arranged to meet a businessman involved in the local coal industry. he's now scared for his life after being threatened by criminals. we've agreed to hide his identity for his own protection. it was very terrible because it was the first time someone pulls a gun on me. they held it to your head? yeah, held it to my head. told me i must do one, two, three. did they threaten your family? they did. they told me they are not afraid of anybody. they are politically connected. so, they're above the law? basically. these political connections are crucial. investigations by south african journalists have revealed alleged links between corruption in the coal industry

and some of the country's most powerful politicians. this leaked intelligence document claims to identify four criminal cartels, each with a network of henchmen and assassins and links to senior government officials — a sign here, to many, of the rot within the governing anc. the anc cannot solve this problem because the anc is as involved as everyone else in this problem. it's so deep in the rot, it doesn't know how to extricate itself, and any attempt to fix the problem exacerbates it. can anyone stop the rot? in 2019, a businessman, andre de ruyter, was brought in to clean up the state power utility eskom. he was blunt about the challenges. so, the stays were cut, the tower was pushed over onto the other line but nothing was stolen.

so, this is not an economic crime. this was clearly now an act of sabotage and i think we can call it as such. but that outspokenness would soon get him in trouble. in fact, as we'll see in a moment, it would get him poisoned. the pressure to break south africa's dependence on coal has been building for years. and yet, south ofjohannesburg, machines the size of apartment blocks still scrape at the earth to expose more rich seams. south africa is addicted to coal. right now, 85% of all the power consumed in this country comes from burning this stuff. that's compared with less than 2% in somewhere like the uk, which is why this relatively small economy is still one of the world's great c02 emitters. and here's the impact.

machine whirrs. eight—year—old princess matsebula has grown up in coal country. when she struggles with breathing, it's very hard cos she'll be quiet. she won't eat, she won't talk, she won't do anything. official information about pollution levels here is curiously hard to get but leaked studies suggest this province is among the most polluted places on earth and that the coal industry is killing thousands of people every year. my wish is they have to cancel the coal so that we can breathe clean air. do you think they will? they must. they must cancel the coal because it is killing us. this coal is killing us. these local campaigners say

the government is putting jobs before health and ignoring court orders to enforce pollution standards. it's — for me, i can't even explain the feeling inside. sobs. and it's been long talking about this but it doesn't come up into terms where i can swallow it. it's painful. so, nothing changes? nothing changes. sniffs. but change might be coming. south africa is big and sunny. it has vast wind and solar potential. and western nations are now backing something called a just energy transition — an $8 billion plan to help wean south africa off coal.

we have a vast, abundant energy source freely available to us, which is our wind and solar resources. they're amongst the best of anywhere in the world. so, we have some real least—cost options in front of us. we can transition very rapidly onto a renewable—dominant energy system. and speed is crucial because if south africa drags its feet on going green, its exports could soon be blacklisted by other countries. you know, i'm talking about the hard economic reality. if we don't decarbonise, we're going to be shut out of the global trading system and we're going to lose massive amounts of jobs. but the just energy transition faces obstacles — lots of them.

coal miners and their unions worry — with good reason — about their own jobs vanishing here in south africa. many people will lose theirjob. they'll lose their job if the coal was closed down, the coal mining stopped? we'd lose ourjobs. and then, there's the politics. plenty of seniorfigures here are sceptical, to put it mildly, about the very idea of abandoning coal. you've been described as a coal fundamentalist, as a bit of a dinosaur, somebody who's obsessed with coal. yes, they call me all sorts of things. �*coal fundamentalist�* and �*fossil—fuel dinosaur�*. do you recognise that? i take those as prestigious statements. it's a compliment. yeah. those are prestigious titles for me. do you believe the west, then, is treating you unfairly, that they're pushing you to get rid of coal in a manner that just doesn't work for south africa? unfairness is an understatement. they are treating us

as a guinea pig. they want to experiment with us. but then, what choice does south africa have but radical change when it can no longer keep the lights on? when south africa's president, cyril ramaphosa, came to power in 2018, he promised to stop the rot. we are determined to build a society defined by decency and integrity that does not tolerate the plunder of public resources, nor the theft by corporate criminals of the hard—earned savings of ordinary people. as part of that process, the president brought in a businessman called andre de ruyter — the tall white man he's greeting here. his task — to lead south africa's energy transformation and to fix the mess at the power utility eskom. the rot was much worse than i anticipated when i took thejob. my rough estimate of the amount

of money that gets stolen in eskom every month is in the region of a billion rand. every month. a billion rand. that's $50 million each month. to be fair, there have been some arrests. this man is an alleged saboteur, accused of damaging a local power station on behalf of a criminal gang. but these prosecutions are targeting the lower ranks. the cartel leaders, the politicians seem untouchable and still determined to block the transition away from coal. there are so many vested interests in the coal value chain that the threat of decarbonisation, even though we're talking about a multi—decade move — gradual, very gradual move away from coal — why that is

so...eagerly opposed. the minister of mineral resources and energy, gwede mantashe, says that... soon, seniorfigures within the governing anc started to attack de ruyter and his team at eskom. ..eskom, by not attending to load shedding, is actively agitating for the overthrow of the state. that's right. the energy minister was accusing de ruyter and his reform team of treason. one morning soon after that, de ruyter was in his office and asked an assistant for a cup of coffee. at first, the coffee machine was said to be broken and the eskom boss's mug was briefly left beside it unattended. minutes later, a full cup

was taken to de ruyter. i detected nothing. and then about 15, 20 minutes after this cup of coffee, i started feeling extremely nauseous. and the theory is that it was a mixture of cyanide and sodium arsenite, which is a rat poison. he survived, but quit his job and fled the country. and this is where the poisoning happened — in a supposedly secure executive suite. it's an extraordinary thing for your ceo to be poisoned in the building. yeah. so, that investigation is ongoing at the moment. we have been engaging with the authorities on that. ongoing, but there have been no arrests. that's pretty shocking, given what happened. but i guess it's a process, hey? we'll see. or a whitewash. laughs.

i'm not going to comment. when you are going hard at the criminals and looking at, you know, eradicating all the evils within the organisation, it becomes a dangerous area. you're still scared for your life? no, absolutely. every day, i am. and the reaction from the governing party? rather than supporting the poisoned ceo, many in the anc were openly hostile or, at best, sceptical. de ruyter, who was the head of eskom, the ceo... yes. ..he was poisoned late last year, at the end of last year. i can't give evidence to that. so, he might have been lying? i can't give evidence to that. his doctors say he was poisoned. the tests show he was poisoned. i can't... i can't give evidence to that. why can't you acknowledge that? did you call him up and see how he was? no, i can't give evidence on things i don't know. so, you don't recognise this picture he's portrayed of an anc using eskom as a feeding trough?

no, i don't. "the looting he describes, it may be going on, but i've "got no proof of it." it sounds like you're deflecting responsibility for a terrible mess. no, i'm not deflecting. but the man who helped lead a long judicial inquiry into state corruption here believes the situation is now worse than ever. one common theme that runs through all those assassinations and attempted assassinations is access to resources, access to state resources in a way that criminals can easily benefit. now, the poisoning of de ruyter is part, not an isolated instance, part of a whole pattern of conduct. our country is in a serious, dark place.

to which the optimists here reply, "look around you." the move to renewable energy is happening anyway, regardless of the corruption, regardless of what south africa's government does or doesn't do. unstoppable. i mean, i can confidently say the energy transition in this country is well under way. not always by design, sometimes driven by crisis and ineptitude, but it's happening at a pace and scale that from us in the climate commission we can say is a very positive development. but that optimism has to be set against the struggles south africa still faces — the struggle against deep poverty and inequality, the struggle to clean up politics and to break the criminals' chokehold on the economy. i just think it's getting worse. just getting worse.

if we don't do something about this, if there isn't the political will, then, yes, we're talking about it's a failed state because there is no solution in sight. hello. friday was another fine and dry day for the vast majority, with high pressure dominating our weather picture. there was lots of sunshine around. just a little bit of this fair—weather cloud popping up for a time, like here, in chorley, lancashire. it was across the other side of the hills that we had the day's highest temperature. bainbridge, in north yorkshire, popping up to 23 degrees celsius, friday afternoon — that's seven degrees above the may average. so, pleasant in the sun,

and you can see on the satellite picture just how sunny it was. just a little bit of cloud across northern england, a bit for northern ireland, and a bit for northern scotland, but looking out in the atlantic, we've got a weather front that's set to bring some much thicker cloud in over the next few hours. so, clouding over across north—western areas of the uk, an odd spit of rain by dawn. otherwise, it's dry with clear skies, and temperatures about six to eight degrees celsius. if you're heading outside first thing in the morning, saturday morning, yes, you might need a layer or two — it will be a little on the cool side. saturday's forecast, then, high pressure staying put for most of us but this week, weather front is working into that area of high pressure and so, for scotland, we see the cloud thicken. a little bit of light, patchy rain, followed by sunshine and showers in the afternoon. it will turn cooler — temperatures about 11 to 13 across the far north of scotland. for northern ireland, england and wales, plenty of dry weather and sunshine, and it's going to feel warm — high teens to low 20s widely, but peaking at around 23 across the spine of the country, through parts of northern england, the midlands and central southern england.

southern and eastern scotland should be pleasant enough as well. still holding on to a bit of sunshine here. ok, on sunday, high pressure is still with us but there's probably going to be a little bit more in the way of cloud developing, for a time. i think sunny spells, though, coming through that. temperatures just easing down for scotland, northern ireland, northern england, so mid—to—high teens here. the warmest weather towards the south—west, where we could see around 23 degrees again. but wherever the may sunshine comes out, i think it's going to feel ok, and it's a similar picture, really, for bank holiday monday itself. a bit more of a wind blowing for east anglia and south—east england. that could make it feel a little on the cool side, first thing in the morning. but once we've got that sunshine coming through again, it should feel ok. and temperatures are going to start to rise in scotland. 21 in glasgow could be one of the warmest places in the country but turning a bit cooler down the eastern side of england. beyond that, deeper into next week, it's sunny and it's set to get warmer. for some, temperatures could reach the mid 20s. bye for now.

those are prestigious titles for me.

live from london, this is bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. president biden expresses optimism that a deal will soon be reached with republicans to raise the us government debt ceiling. it's the final day of campaigning in turkey ahead of one of the country's most divisive presidential elections, where the economy and immigration are key voter concerns. south africa's ruling party admits to the bbc that it may lose its political majority if it can't fix the country's ongoing energy crisis.

hello, i'm lukwesa burak.