HARARE – Parliament has issued an apology to President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the nation following an embarrassing power outage at the New Parliament Building during the closing remarks of Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube’s 2025 national budget presentation on Thursday.
The incident saw Mnangagwa being escorted out of the Chinese built facility in the darkness after parliament’s generators took moments to come to life.
ZESA spokesman George Manyaya immediately attributed the incident to a fault which, he said, had been caused by lightning.
Manyaya said “it’s an act of nature and definitely not load shedding as is being suggested on social media”.
In a statement, parliament also apologised to Mnangagwa saying information at hand indicated that thunderstorms and high winds affected overhead lines resulting in tripping at a 132kv feeder that supplies power to a substation which feeds power to Mt Hampden.
The fault, according to parliament, also affected areas neighbouring the Mt Hampden building at around 3.25PM.
Parliament said the standby generator at the building was equally affected by the power surge resulting in the generator losing its memory settings.
The incident would not have happened at a worse time than a period in which the entire nation and the world’s attention focussed on how Zimbabwe sought to address its myriad economic challenges through its budget.
Zimbabwe has endured recurrent power woes which have seen both businesses and households spend long periods without the critical resource everyday.
While the recurrent power shortages have often been linked to depleting water levels at Lake Kariba, the country’s main source of power in decades – by government, the incident on Thursday spotlighted on the Zimbabwean authorities’ failures to find lasting solutions to the crisis.
