Eskom said:
“The president said we can’t retrench, which means we are looking at other ways. The pain has to be taken by suppliers, customers, shareholders, employees, and management,” he said.
Isn't Eskom 100% government owned, as in there is 1 and only 1 shareholder (not plural)?
Or did he specifically not mention tax payers because he thinks tax payers are somehow shareholders?
The problem isn't Eskom's prices and mismanagement.
The real problem is that the government has a state-enforced monopoly on power production and distribution and that it legally prevents anyone else from generating electrical power and selling it. Furthermore, the State arrogates to itself the communist power of setting retail prices.
Our problems with Eskom would be solved overnight if the State abolished these outrageous coercive and compulsory monopolies.
(The handful of non-Eskom generators at municipalities and mines antedate the 1922 law that entrenched the State monopoly on electricity production.)
So you are saying that if president Ramaphosa had the power to declare (this or on some other future evening) that Eskom no longer has a monopoly on electricity production, that the very next day all electricity problems would magically be solved.
It takes time to build power stations, including renewables like solar and wind farms, these things do not happen overnight and it would also take a fair amount of time to get transmission lines in place etc etc etc.
Even a state owned and run monopoly (like Eskom) can successfully fulfil its intended mandate if it is managed properly, Eskom can and must be turned around, even if it loses its monopoly status Eskom still needs to be fixed.
South Africa does not have time to waste waiting for competing energy companies to create new power plants (whether coal, nuclear or renewables), the only short-term solution is for government to catch a wakeup and brutally turn Eskom around, without reliable electricity there is no economy, and without an economy the country tanks.
And by brutally, I mean retrench all of the dead wood, even go as far as reducing electricity prices in stages to breathe life back into the economy, and municipality budget money that National Treasury would normally pay directly to municipalities is conditionally paid if no debt is owed to Eskom.
There are lots of things that government can do to rescue Eskom, there is however no quick fix silver bullet for reducing that mountain of debt to more sustainable levels, it will take time to at least halve that debt, government just needs to start without further delays.
and that’s without considering non-payment by municipalities & supply optimization which I suspect is both needed just to break even.
