Ramaphosa Signs Off on Stripping Eskom of Transmission Grid
President Ramaphosa has signed legislation transferring Eskom's transmission assets away from the utility, marking a landmark structural reform of South Africa's electricity sector. The presidential sign-off represents the most significant governance change to the national grid in Eskom's history.
SA Grid Reform: the hardest part isn't the politics — it's the maths
Ramaphosa's sign-off settles the political argument: the transmission grid will be stripped from Eskom and handed to a genuinely independent operator. That fight was real, and winning it matters.
But the task team buried the actual difficulty in its terms of reference. The restructuring must leave Eskom no worse off financially — while Eskom currently survives on a government debt-relief package and is owed R114 billion in unpaid municipal bills. Separating a utility's crown asset without either weakening the utility or passing the cost onto tariffs is not a political problem. It's an accounting problem that has defeated restructurings like this elsewhere.
Phase one already ran two months late. Phase two has the same window. The December 2029 deadline is real, not symbolic. Whether the maths can actually be made to work is the only question left.
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- Ramaphosa signs off on taking the grid away from Eskom · techcentral.co.za · T2