Eskom boss makes the right noises

It is strange that anything could occupy the headspace of people so completely that it excludes the ongoing disaster at South Africa’s power utility – yet coronavirus has done that.

People should be thankful that Eskom has not added to their woes with load shedding during the lockdown. That is one of the reasons it is not top of mind at the moment … but it remains a huge problem which won’t go away, even after the virus subsides.

It was encouraging to hear Eskom chief executive officer Andre de Ruyter say there will be major changes coming to the entire electricity supply industry. He acknowledges that this has to happen because Eskom is an “anomaly in the global utility world” because of its unwieldy and inefficient “vertical” structures.

De Ruyter is supporting the plan to split the corporation into three units as the first step towards creating an independent power transmission system, leading to an eventual unbundling of the entity.

He also said the way was open for diversification of power supply by public-private partnerships, as well as permitting independent power producers.

That is good news because it is the centralisation of this vital utility which has allowed so much corruption to cripple it in the first place.

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