By Nco Dube | 31 August 2026

Eskom survived state capture, managerial vandalism and political inteference that condemned South Africa to years of load shedding. It may now have to survive reform.

Its latest results are the clearest evidence yet that the recovery is real. Profit after tax more than doubled to R30.3 billion, from a restated R14 billion. Adjusted EBITDA rose to R108.6 billion. Cash generation strengthened, expensive diesel use fell and plant availability improved to 65.16%. By late August, Eskom reported more than 460 consecutive days without load shedding.

This second consecutive profit after eight years of losses proves that focused leadership, disciplined maintenance and managerial space can still revive a battered public institution.

Yet just as Eskom has begun to stand, government appears determined to remove one of the legs beneath it.

Recovery Does Not Justify Haste

These are not miracle results. Revenue benefited from a 12.74% tariff increase while sales fell by 6.2%. Municipal arrears reached R111.6 billion at year-end, debt remained heavy and government relief was indispensable.

But those vulnerabilities strengthen the case for caution. They do not justify haste. A patient who has just left intensive care is not made healthier by removing an organ that produces income.

Independence Is Not Amputation

At the centre of the dispute is the future ownership of the transmission grid. Government wants a fully independent, state-owned Transmission System Operator outside Eskom. It argues that the TSO must own the assets, operate the electricity market and provide non-discriminatory grid access to Eskom and private generators alike.

There is a legitimate case for an independent operator. Capacity allocation, connections and dispatch must be transparent and insulated from every generator’s commercial interests, including Eskom’s.

But independence of the operator and immediate transfer of asset ownership are not the same proposition.

The Electricity Regulation Amendment Act gives government until the end of 2029 to establish the TSO and allows Eskom’s transmission subsidiary to perform its functions meanwhile. The law contemplates a transition. It does not demand that Eskom’s balance sheet be amputated before the consequences are resolved.

In December 2025, Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa approved a strategy under which the TSO would operate the market while grid assets remained within Eskom during the transition. He said this would preserve financial stability and energy security.

That was not resistance to reform. It was sequencing.

Two months later, President Cyril Ramaphosa used the State of the Nation Address to override that strategy and policy direction to insist that the TSO must own the grid. In July, he endorsed the first phase of a restructuring task-team report supporting the same outcome. The full report has not been made public; only the Presidency’s summary has been released, although its conclusions may reshape one of the largest public asset bases in democratic South Africa.

Government calls this policy certainty. From Eskom’s boardroom, it must look like a policy reversal being hurried into permanence.

The Crime of Doing One’s Duty

Mteto Nyati’s supposed offence was to say so.

The Eskom chair warned that a premature transfer could trigger loan provisions, create accounting complications and unsettle bondholders. Transmission contributes roughly 40% of Eskom’s earnings, Nyati said, while a board valuation placed the assets at about R110 billion. Establish the operator, he argued, but transfer the assets only once debt and lender obligations are settled.

These are not the objections of a man defending a personal kingdom. They are the questions a competent board must ask before approving the movement of R110 billion in public infrastructure.

The Presidency nevertheless rebuked Nyati publicly, accusing him of creating the impression that restructuring was proceeding without Eskom and to its detriment. It insisted that Eskom’s concerns were known and had been discussed.

Known is not the same as resolved.

Government cannot say the risks are settled while Treasury is still engaging lenders, determining valuations and developing the transaction. If the answers remain open, the board must keep asking the questions.

The board is more than entitled to speak. It is legally obliged to act. Section 50 of the Public Finance Management Act requires Eskom’s accounting authority to protect its assets, act in the entity’s best interests and prevent prejudice to the financial interests of the state.

What was Nyati expected to do? Nod respectfully while billions in assets and earnings were reassigned, then explain afterwards why the board had failed to anticipate the consequences?

South Africa has a peculiar approach to SOE governance. Boards are condemned for submission when corruption erupts, then accused of obstruction when they challenge the shareholder. Government wants independent directors, provided their independence does not inconvenience government.

The Minister Who Stepped Back

Then there is Ramokgopa.

He has defended unbundling while questioning its pace and scale, warned that Eskom could become a “casualty”, and argued that it cannot compete fairly under obligations not imposed on private players.

In substance, he concedes much of Nyati’s case. Politically, however, he has been absent when that case most required a defender.

This is the Minister whose staged model the President overturned, and who had publicly supported the chair the Presidency later rebuked. Yet when Nyati was dressed down for raising concerns Ramokgopa himself had accepted, the Minister did not publicly confront the rebuke or clearly defend the December model he had approved.

The restructuring is now driven by a Treasury-led task team. Ramokgopa’s department is represented, but the Minister responsible for Eskom no longer appears to be driving the defining decision about its future.

He deserves credit for stabilisation. The dedicated electricity ministry helped reduce fragmented oversight and gave Nyati, Dan Marokane, Bheki Nxumalo and Eskom’s teams room to work. Nyati has also credited him with prioritising merit in appointing the board.

But political credit carries political responsibility. Ramokgopa cannot claim the turnaround while becoming a spectator to a restructuring that may undo it. He should tell the country whether he still stands by the reasoning behind his December decision. The Minister has spoken around this dispute. He has not spoken through it.

A Playing Field Tilted Against Eskom

The broader problem lies in government’s invocation of a “level playing field”. Equal terms between whom?

Private generators can select bankable projects and creditworthy customers. They do not carry Eskom’s universal-service duty to electrify indigent households at the end of an expensive rural line, nor its burden of municipal arrears, an ageing coal fleet and the role of supplier of last resort.

Eskom does.

Private producers pay regulated network and wheeling charges. The issue is not free access. It is whether those charges recover the network’s fixed costs, balancing and reserve capacity, legacy liabilities and the cross-subsidies required to keep poor households connected.

If competitors take Eskom’s most creditworthy customers while Eskom retains municipal debt, developmental obligations and politically constrained tariffs, competition will not discipline Eskom. It will hollow it out. A playing field is not level when one runner must carry the stadium on his back.

Removing grid assets without proportional debt transfer, fair value and protected revenue could leave Eskom holding the liabilities while the TSO inherits the bankable infrastructure. That is not necessarily privatisation in law. But privatisation can also occur through how risk and return are allocated.

Risk remains social. Return becomes increasingly private.

Publish the Arithmetic Before Moving the Assets

Before any major asset moves, government must publish the task-team report and its financial modelling. It must disclose the valuations, identify the liabilities that will transfer, secure lender consent and explain how Eskom will be compensated for lost earnings. Above all, it must decide who funds the developmental mandate in the new market.

South Africa needs electricity reform, competition and private investment. But reform should expand national capability, not punish a public institution for demonstrating that it can recover.

For years, government neglected Eskom, interfered in its decisions and allowed criminal networks to burrow into it. It then cited the resulting collapse as proof that the institution itself was the problem. Eskom’s recovery has complicated that script. It has shown that public ownership was not the sole cause of failure. Political interference, corruption, deferred maintenance and governance failure were.

If restructuring is genuinely designed to leave Eskom no worse off, government should prove it before the assets move. If it cannot, “reform” is simply the respectable word being used for dispossession.

Eskom has turned the corner. The state should put away the knife.