Power Crisis in South Africa: A Shades of Manila circa 1990s and California circa 2000s.

About five-hour rolling blackouts are hitting Cape Town, Johannesburg and other areas of South Africa. Eskom Holdings Ltd., the state-ran power utility, is predicting that South Africa's worst-ever power outages will last beyond 2013.

A lack of new power plants and increased energy demand have conspired to reduce power to residential end-users, stores and restaurants, as well as the big miners and smelters such as BHP Billiton Ltd. and Anglo American Plc. In fact, Eskom forged a deal with big power users to cut 15% of power supply to them.

Aside from street riots, protests and traffic jams, the African power debacle was the main trigger of the recent record bull run by a number of precious metals like gold, palladium and platinum.