"The system will continue to be constrained with an elevated risk of loadshedding over the coming weeks," Eskom said in a statement.

Africa's most industrialised economy has been constrained by "loadshedding", the local term for power cuts, as old coal-fired plants that supply the bulk of the country's electricity regularly break down, forcing Eskom to cut power to preserve the national grid from total collapse.

Earlier this month, Eskom cut around 4,000 MW of power in a so-called "Stage 4" outage - some of the worst power cuts in more than a decade, while this weekend's cuts were categorized as "Stage 1", or 1,000 MW.

(Reporting by Wendell Roelf, editing by Louise Heavens)