Burning Billions – What’s the true cost of keeping South Africa’s lights on?
Lies, damned lies, and loadshedding…
“In another 18 months to two years, you will forget the challenges that we had with Eskom.”
Cyril Ramaphosa, then Deputy President, September 2015.
In every state of the nation address since 2018, Ramaphosa has boldly claimed we’d soon be looking at load-shedding in our rear-view mirrors.
In May 2023, he told us the end of load-shedding “should be in sight soon.”
In August 2023, he claimed the government was doing “great work” to fix Eskom, and promised “by 2024, the energy crisis will be over.”
The following month, Deputy President Paul Mashatile repeated this promise, saying that the government wants to “put load-shedding behind us by next year”.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when we were hit by a period of prolonged Stage 6 loadshedding (no electricity for between 11 and 12 hours a day).
The outages were hastily justified as “short-term pain for long-term gain…[this is] what Eskom is having to do to reposition the generation of our fleet.”
Admittedly, for a brief while, it seemed he might be right. In January 2025, the government marked the “milestone” of 300 consecutive days without load shedding.
Yet, a scant month later, we were back at Stage 3, followed quickly by our old friend, Stage 6.
The fact that Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, in a metaphorical rending of garments, said, “I’m the minister and I bear the responsibility, working with Eskom, so there’s no other person but myself. The buck stops here,” was little comfort to those struggling to keep businesses afloat, and families fed.
South Africans are becoming mighty tired of ministers writing cheques they can’t cash.
Which is why, when Eskom chief executive Dan Marokane recently said we can expect a load shedding‑free winter, no one got too excited. Especially as his announcement was hastily followed up with this caveat: “…provided unplanned outages stay below 13 GW.”
Apparently, we’re supposed to be grateful that, if breakdowns do creep up to 15 GW, we can expect “no more than 21 days of Stage 2 cuts,”- two stages less than last winter’s worst‑case scenario.
Let’s be honest, it’s all just putting lipstick on a pig.
We know that even if we somehow, magically, managed to avoid prolonged bouts of high-stage load shedding this winter, it’s likely not going to be because Eskom has finally managed to improve its plant performance.
It’ll be because we’re keeping our diesel-powered open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) running as an almost full-time electricity generator, instead of just for emergency back-up.
The Daily Investor reports that from 1 to 24 April 2025, Eskom generated 378.9 gigawatt-hours of electricity using OCGTs. That’s well over two thirds more than during the same period last year.
In March alone, the cost of the diesel used to run the turbines was around R3.6 billion. And in the first 10 days of April, the diesel bill stood at R1.34 billion.
By now, Eskom has become incredibly adept at defending what it terms the “strategic” use of OCGTs, saying it’s so it can conduct “intensified planned maintenance.”
But, as an article by ActionSA states, “This runaway diesel spend reveals a harsh truth: South Africa hasn’t ended loadshedding – we’ve simply replaced it with an unaffordable illusion, paid for by the taxpayer.”
It goes on to say, “While diesel generators keep the grid afloat, the utility’s Energy Availability Factor (EAF) – the key measure of plant performance – remains critically low at just 56.11%. That’s far below the 70% target set by the Minister of Electricity to eliminate loadshedding. This also marks a decline compared to the same period last year, when EAF stood at 58.96%.
“This means Eskom has fewer megawatts available now than it did a year ago, yet it is spending more than ever to mask the crisis with diesel. That is not a recovery – it is a cover-up with devastating fiscal consequences.”
The facts are frightening:
Diesel costs over 12 times more than coal and 58 times more than nuclear.
In just one month, Eskom spent R3.6 billion to produce a fraction of the power that could have been generated by fixing coal stations, which would have come at a fraction of the cost of the diesel.
If the same power had come from coal, the cost would have been closer to R300 million.
As ActionSA points out, “All of this is happening while the country faces a budget impasse, with ordinary South Africans expected to pay more tax while government mismanagement, corruption and waste remain unchecked.
“Eskom’s diesel habit is not just unaffordable, but robbing South Africans of resources that should be going to education, policing, clinics, and infrastructure.”
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to the problems with Eskom, and any light at the end of the tunnel is almost certainly that of an oncoming train.
None of which, however, seems to deter our once mighty power utility from making bold promise after bold promise.
In October last year, Eskom spat out some tasty sound bites about “achieving financial and operational sustainability” and “implementing ongoing structural improvements.”
“The target is to reach a 70% EAF by March 2025, which will not only ensure a stable energy supply but also reduce diesel expenditure,” it said at the time.
This was supplemented by a statement from chairman Mteto Nyati, who said Eskom’s Generation Recovery Plan would be completed by 31 March 2025.
“At the end of March 2025, the Minister, myself, and the CEO, will communicate to South Africa that there’s not going to be load-shedding,” Nyati said.
Of course, this announcement never happened, and load-shedding continued.
Once again, Eskom has failed to meet its own targets and deliver on its own deadlines, despite billions in taxpayer funded government bailouts and massive annual NERSA-approved price increases.
At Eskom’s recent 2025 Winter Outlook briefing, Nyati admitted that the power utility “did not meet expectations.”
(No 💩, Sherlock).
“We have not been proud of how we have performed. A few metrics showed that things did not align with what we were capable of doing,” he said.
After spending what he described as “a lot of time establishing the root causes of the problems,” they’ve decided a significant part of the problem is “leadership-related. We have to make sure they follow standard operating procedures, and we hold people accountable,” he said.
And yet, in the next breath, instead of admitting a sense of deep disappointment, and outlining tangible plans for how they plan to do that, Nyati said they Eskom is celebrating its successes.
In an interview with My Broadband, he said, “In the last financial year, Eskom has significantly improved year-on-year across operational, financial and sustainability metrics. The fact that [leadership] missed some stretch targets does not mean that they have performed poorly. As a board, we are proud of what Eskom management has achieved in the last financial year.”
I’m pretty sure they are literally the only people in South Africa who feel this way.
I for one won’t be popping open any bubbly until there is something real, sustainable, and long-term to celebrate.