NEWS ANALYSIS: Election politics leave drained Eskom flickering
Eskom is on the brink. Its finances and operations are in utter disrepair and load shedding is once again commonplace in the South African vocabulary. Now a sustainability task team has been urgently brought in by President Cyril Ramaphosa to tackle the deepening crisis at the utility. It has long been warned that fixing Eskom will be a painful process. Costs have to be cut, and jobs too. A restructuring and privatisation of some kind must be considered if it is to stay afloat. This is an election year and one in which with the ANC is concerned about losing votes. If reforming Eskom appeared politically impossible before, just try it now. “It’s technically feasible to announce a perfect plan from the task team before the elections,” says Peter Attard Montalto, head of capital markets research at Intellidex. “But the reality of course is that this is politically impossible.” Darias Jonker, political analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia group agrees. “It’s a very complex situ...
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