Eskom appoints former Vodacom and Maziv executive to head distribution business
Eskom has announced the appointment of Junaid Munshi as its new group executive for its distribution division, effective from 1 June 2026.
He will oversee the Eskom business that serves as the direct connection to South African electricity customers supplied by the utility.
Munshi is a seasoned telecommunications business executive who served as a managing executive at Vodacom and as the chief commercial officer for fibre business giant Maziv.
He replaces Monde Bala, who held the position until he was seconded to interim CEO at the National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA). Bala was later fully appointed as CEO.
The national utility said that Munshi’s appointment brought in his three decades of engineering, marketing and commercial leadership to Eskom.
Prior to the new appointment, Munshi served as the chief commercial officer for Cables & Wireless Seychelles until October 2025, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Eskom group CEO Dan Marokane indicated that the appointment was an effort to bring in external expertise into the utility in order to better compete in the market.
“As we have indicated before, we adopt the approach of augmenting internal capabilities with external capabilities, where required, to bring about speed to deliver on our strategy,” he said.
“We have seen a noticeable increase in the volume and calibre of the applicants who want to work for Eskom, demonstrating that this is a company people want to bring their skills to and build their careers.”
Munshi spent three years and nine months at Maziv, a Vumatel parent, where he oversaw commercial operations. Before that, he served as the commercial officer for rival telecom Cell C.
His longest stint at a company was at Vodacom, where he held marketing positions between 2004 and 2017, briefly interrupted by a four-month stint at Digicel in Jamaica.
He remained at Vodacom until he was appointed to oversee M-Pesa in South Africa in 2017, with the responsibility of retiring the mobile money platform locally after a failed eight-year investment.
Munshi has a Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering from the University of Cape Town and a Graduate Diploma in Engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Alongside these qualifications, he also earned a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Wits Business School.
“In the reformed, liberalised marketplace, we recognise we are no longer a monopoly and need to compete to retain and expand our customer base,” said Marokane.
“We are making the necessary investments to empower our distribution division teams to do so.”
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