Johnson Progress

The blackout, which struck as Mnangagwa neared the end of his nationwide address, was the second such incident in less than a year.

In November 2024 a similar outage disrupted the national budget presentation, and this time the chamber was briefly lit only by flickering lights, a scene captured on video.

“A video showed the Parliament chamber briefly illuminated by flickering lights,” the outlet reported, noting that the President left the hall looking visibly upset.

Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda quickly apologised to Mnangagwa and warned that the culprit would face severe consequences.

Mudenda expressed deep regret for the disruption and vowed to track down whoever caused the failure.

“The person who switched off electricity while the President was speaking will regret the day he was born,” he told MPs, adding that ‘investigators would go beyond what happened, trace the culprit, and deal with them accordingly”.

Parliament’s statement, signed by Clerk K.M. Chokuda, said the building was running on a generator as the main power source, with ZESA supply as a standby, but the system failed.

“The loss of power supplies to key systems occurred when the Parliament building was running on a generator, a circuit breaker supplying the load had tripped,” the statement explained, and the restoration “took longer than expected, resulting in part of the SONA being delivered without power supply”.

A letter from the acting clerk, dated 21 October, had requested a “serviced, fully tested and fit” generator and guaranteed uninterrupted power, noting that the event would run using the generator as the primary source of power, with ZETDC power on standby, following previous power disruptions and promising timely payment and fuel for the generator.

The incident has intensified criticism of Zimbabwe’s chronic electricity crisis, with daily load‑shedding and recent drought‑driven shortfalls at Kariba Dam.

ZANU‑PF activist Cleopas Mukungunugwa called the blackout “pure, unadulterated sabotage,” while social media users turned the moment into a meme, coining the phrase “State of the Darkness Address” and linking the outage to the controversial, multi‑million‑dollar Gwanda solar project that has produced no panels.

Officials from ZESA and Parliament have yet to issue a full explanation, and an investigation is underway.

The President’s calm demeanor continuing his speech under torchlight contrasted with the growing public frustration over the country’s energy woes.