I recently asked a former senior executive at Eskom how long the window would remain open for the utility to change. The real question, which I didn’t ask, probably because I feared the answer, was: is it too late? Their pause was long enough to tell its own tale. The reply — diplomatic — was that “Eskom should already have changed”.

They have been away from Eskom long enough to have missed a shift within the utility. It is a strangely insular place, under siege from all sides and the victim of a million derisory memes. This, the fact that it is onerous and complicated to procure outside advice, and that government feels a need to insert overpaid buffoons between it and us, means Eskom’s problems — and its pockets of excellence — hide behind the barricades at Megawatt Park...

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