Columns25.05.2026

State-owned company paid its CEO R11.7 million after it received a massive taxpayer-funded bailout from the government

By Staff Writer

Eskom increased its chief executive’s salary by nearly R5 million in the 2025 financial year, despite the company being in serious financial distress.

The state-owned company also increased the annual salaries of its staff by an average of R167,000, the biggest nominal increase in history.

In addition, Eskom increased the number of employees from 40,625 to 42,030, even as the company is looking to cut costs.

This resulted in the power producer’s total employee cost ballooning by R8.3 billion in a year — from R37.1 billion to R45.4 billion.

What was particularly striking was that these large salary increases and bonuses came at a time when Eskom needed a bailout from the government to make ends meet.

Eskom faced such severe financial and operational problems that it required an intervention from the National Treasury to stay afloat.

It received a multi-year debt relief package from the government, which initially aimed to take over R254 billion of its debt burden.

Since the initial announcement, the structured five-year layout has shifted to the government directly taking over roughly R230 billion in loans.

Simply put, taxpayers had to step in to save Eskom, which has been financially ruined by years of corruption and mismanagement.

By 31 March 2025, Eskom had received a total of R140 billion in support since the implementation of the Eskom Debt Relief Act.

In the private sector, a company in this situation would have had to slash costs through staff cuts and potentially lower salaries.

However, in Eskom’s case, it employed more people and significantly increased their basic salaries and bonuses.

It then turned the knife through very large electricity increases, which means the taxpayers who bailed them out have to fund these big salary increases.

Eskom’s big salary increases in 2025 and its lagging performance

In the 2025 financial year, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane was paid R11.728 million, which included a basic salary of R9 million.

This was significantly higher than his predecessor, André de Ruyter, who, on average, earned around R7 million per year during his tenure as Eskom chief executive.

In the 2021 financial year, De Ruyter was paid R7.138 million, followed by R7.111 million and R6.910 million over the next two years.

Employees also benefited from Eskom’s generosity. In the 2025 financial year, they received an average annual salary of R1.08 million.

The R167,000 average salary increase and higher staff numbers led to Eskom’s total employee costs rising from R37.1 billion to R45.4 billion.

With such huge increases, one would have assumed that Eskom’s top management and employees comfortably met all their targets. Not so.

Eskom’s core target, which it communicated to South Africans, is the energy availability factor (EAF) of its generation fleet.

In 2011, Eskom stated in its annual report that it aspired to an energy availability factor of 90%. This aligned with its performance in the nineties.

However, between 2011 and 2024, Eskom’s EAF plummeted from 85% to 55%. Load-shedding was needed to compensate for this dismal performance.

It then announced new targets. They set clear EAF benchmarks of 60% by March 2023, 65% by March 2024, and 70% by March 2025.

In the 2025 financial year, Eskom only achieved an energy availability factor of 60.6%, well below the 70% target.

Despite missing this core performance metric by a country mile, Eskom celebrated its performance and rewarded everyone handsomely.

Considering these facts, it is not difficult to see why many South African taxpayers are not fond of what is happening at Eskom.

This is an opinion piece.