Eskom is much stronger under Marokane than it was under De Ruyter

Luis

Luis

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Eskom goes from zero under André de Ruyter to hero under Dan Marokane

When André de Ruyter left Eskom in February 2023, the power utility was at its lowest point. Three years later, it is in a much stronger position.

De Ruyter served as Eskom's CEO from January 2020 until February 2023, a period during which South Africa experienced the worst load-shedding in its history.
 
I mean they aren't wrong... But also can't really going around tooting your own horn
 
So we're just going to ignore how South African's are paying for the stupidity in Eskom's Management, the fact that they are paying huge bonusses for not performing and now making profits from overcharging for unreliable electricity? Shockingly poor blogging - this doesn't even qualify as journalism!
 
The change that makes eskom look good is the fact they have to burn way less diesel

Arguably they can't take 100% credit for that

Those units are the most expensive to make

So naturally it will have a big impact on eskoms bottomline

Not forgetting all the hefty increases was blamed on what it costs to actually produce the electricity, and way more had to be produced on expensive means

So now they are laughing all the way

And as with everythhing prices gets pushed up due to fuel increases but never down

Colour me surprised we get ficked
 
What an absolute joke of a headline. This is revisionist history, and it says a lot about how short memories are when it comes to Eskom.

Calling De Ruyter "zero" while hailing Marokane as a "hero" doesn't survive contact with the actual timeline. And honestly, the real timeline makes the headline look even worse, because most of the credit people are handing Marokane doesn't even belong to him. It belongs to an interim exec nobody remembers.

  1. Who actually fixed the generation fleet? De Ruyter inherited a fleet that had been run into the ground by over a decade of deferred maintenance, all so the lights would stay on just long enough to look good politically. South Africa hit Stage 6 load-shedding for the first time a month before he even started the job. He was the first CEO willing to say the fleet needed real, proper maintenance instead of more duct tape, even knowing that would mean brutal short-term load-shedding while units were down.
  2. The return of the big units wasn't mostly Marokane's doing. Kusile units 1, 2 and 3 (2,400MW combined) went down in October 2022 when the flue gas duct collapsed. The bypass stack fix and the procurement to make it happen were set up under De Ruyter. Here's the part the headline conveniently leaves out though: those units, plus Kusile unit 5 and the Koeberg unit 1 steam generator replacement, all actually came back online in late 2023. That was under interim CEO Calib Cassim, a full year before Marokane even took the job in March 2024. Marokane does deserve credit for Kusile unit 6, the Medupi unit 4 rebuild, and Koeberg unit 2, since those landed during his actual tenure in 2024 and 2025. But even that was just the tail end of a pipeline De Ruyter's team had already set moving years earlier.
  3. The private solar boom did a lot of Eskom's work for it. De Ruyter was the one publicly pushing to deregulate and let the private sector build. Rooftop and private solar capacity went from under 1GW in 2022 to over 6GW by late 2024, and it's past 8GW now. That's mostly ordinary citizens and businesses spending their own money, driven by the exact crisis De Ruyter was managing at the time. Every sunny afternoon, that's megawatts Eskom never had to generate, but Marokane's Eskom still gets to count the reduced strain as part of "the turnaround."
  4. Fighting corruption vs. inheriting a calmer building. De Ruyter took on the coal mafia, went public with cartels he believed were stealing around R1 billion a month, pushed the unbundling of the transmission business further than anyone before him, and got poisoned with cyanide in his own office for his trouble. Marokane walked into a fight that had already been picked for him, and inherited a transmission company that only actually got its operating licence after De Ruyter was already gone.

Giving Marokane sole credit for "saving" Eskom, while writing De Ruyter off as "zero," erases both the guy who took the political hits to start the recovery and the interim leadership that quietly delivered most of the early wins everyone's now crediting to his successor. Love the research you guys did on your article.
 
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