EDITORIAL: Only biting the bullet can stop Eskom from taking the economy down with it
Utility will have to cut costs, reduce debt and put thousands of employees out of their jobs
A decade after black-outs first abruptly put the brakes on the economy, prompting an unaffordable generation capacity expansion spree by Eskom that has seen tariffs rise 350% in the past 10 years, we remain knee-deep in the dwang. Firstly, despite the hundreds of billions of rand spent on building new power stations, we still don’t have enough power, even though demand has barely budged since 2008. Eskom, which still supplies more than 95% of SA’s electricity and controls and operates the country’s transmission and a significant portion of its distribution infrastructure, started its latest round of load-shedding on Sunday. These days the utility’s schedules allow for as much as 8,000 MW to be taken out of the system — double the maximum prepared for previously and equal to nearly 20% of installed nominal capacity. The tariff hikes over the last 10 years have been way above inflation, which was 74% over the same period. Yet Eskom wants to milk its customers even more, asking regulat...
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