ON August 16, Zesco informed the nation that Maamba Energy Limited’s 300MW coal-fired power plant would undergo a month-long maintenance programme. As a result, citizens were told that they would receive five hours of power supply daily during this period. The explanation was that Maamba Energy would down, so supply would be constrained. While five hours of power supply was not desirable, at least there was an explanation and people got to brace themselves for what was coming. Yet within a few days, that five-hour promise collapsed into four, then three, and in some areas just two hours of electricity a day. In fact, some households in Lusaka have gone two to three days without power, not because of faults,...