Staff at the Parliament of Zimbabwe have issued an apology following an embarrassing power outage during the 2025 National Budget presentation on Thursday. The blackout occurred just as President Emmerson Mnangagwa was in attendance, forcing him to leave the Parliament Building in the dark. The unexpected outage lasted nearly five minutes, causing concerns over a potential security threat against the 82-year-old leader.

While Zimbabwe is grappling with its worst power crisis in history, with nationwide load-shedding lasting over 16 hours, Parliament explained that the power cut was caused by a technical issue. Thunderstorms and high winds reportedly affected overhead lines, causing a tripping of the 132kV feeder supplying power to the Mt Hampden substation.

Additionally, Parliament clarified that the backup generator was also impacted by the power surge, which caused it to lose its memory settings. This delay meant the generator could not automatically switch on and had to be manually reset, causing the brief disruption. Power was restored within five minutes of the outage.

Parliament has reassured the nation that measures are being put in place, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, to prevent a recurrence of such an embarrassing incident in the future.