As a South African (living abroad for many years, but still with the bulk of my extended family there), this seems overly alarmist. If you review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis , very few consumers experienced anything like 50% of total hours without electricity even in the darkest days of the load-shedding in 2023. And 2024 was, comparatively, a good year, probably the best since 2020/1.

RE the police force and private security, that has been a fact of life in South Africa for decades, not a new development. Anyone with the means employs private security, in the same way that anyone with means utilizes private health care, not public health care. Here South Africa is not that much different from other high-crime and high-inequality countries like Brazil and Mexico.