Kgosientsho Ramokgopa under fire
A contractual dispute with Spain about funding is behind delays in finalising South Africa’s long-awaited national energy strategy, the Department of Electricity and Energy has said.
It was revealed that the department approached an aid agency to secure critical funding and technical support from the Spanish government.
The minister was grilled in absentia this week, as Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Electricity and Energy reviewed recent departmental results.
Among the issues covered in this week’s session, the committee highlighted that the most pressing concerns are the lagging implementation of the Integrated Energy Plan (IEP).
The committee questioned critical delays in finalising the plan, which is a legal requirement of the minister, as it will direct South Africa’s electricity generation strategies for decades to come.
While Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa himself could not attend the meeting, as he is currently in Brazil on business, departmental officials stood in his place.
They explained that delays in finalising critical aspects of the plan were due to a “tactical agreement” with the Spanish government on funding and technical assistance for South Africa.
According to department officials, Spain is helping Ramokgopa and his department develop the IEP. A contractual disagreement has arisen between the two countries, further delaying matters.
This reached the point that the department hired legal counsel to resolve issues around the contract, which Director-General Subesh Pillay only finally signed off on in December 2025.
Kevin Mileham of the Democratic Alliance (DA) criticised Pillay, asking why the finalisation of South Africa’s entire nationwide energy strategy was waiting on “foreign charity.”
The committee questioned critical delays, with members calling the agreement with the European nation “nonrefundable.”
Pillay said that the department is waiting on the Spanish because “we do require technical assistance,” but that work was being done around the contractual disagreement.
This included preliminary data collection by the South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI) and the University of Cape Town (UCT).
Data collection and analysis must be the legal foundation of the IEP under the National Energy Act. Pillay assured the committee that data collection was progressing along with the two institutions.
UCT has apparently already submitted a verification report and a data platform must be set up to drive the planning. No such platform currently exists.
Electricity minister acting “without legal basis or evidence”
The DA has called on the department and Ramokgopa to immediately present “a clear, legally binding timeline for the tabling of the IEP.”
“We call on the minister to explain how any section 34 procurement determination can be considered legally ‘rational’ while the primary planning instrument required by law does not exist,” says Mileham.
“By failing to build the data platform, the minister has made it legally impossible to produce a compliant IEP.”
The political party further criticised what it called excuses for the delays in establishing the IEP, especially the claim that the department was waiting on the Spanish government.
“It is unacceptable that the statutory planning of South Africa’s energy security is treated as a charity project dependent on foreign handouts,” Mileham added.
The DA argues that without finalising the IEP, there is no basis for Ramokgopa’s current push into nuclear energy or the expansion of gas-to-power projects in South Africa.
In the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) gazetted near the end of 2025, the minister outlined that new energy projects are expected to cost taxpayers R250 billion per year.
Ramokgopa previously said that an initial study from the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa indicated that South Africa’s nuclear build programme would cost at least R60 billion.
South Africa is currently looking for experts in the US, China, Russia, France, and South Korea to aid in the construction of new nuclear capacity.
As for gas, the committee revealed that the department’s “Gas Master Plan” is badly behind schedule, with current efforts in gas power based on the IRP from 2019.
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