Eskom cannot hide salary details from South Africans any longer
Eskom will need to provide a much more detailed breakdown of its employee remuneration after the new provisions of the Companies Amendment Act came into operation.
First signed into law in July 2024, the Companies Act 16 of 2024 and Companies Second Amendment Act 17 of 2024 brought sweeping changes to corporate regulations, including employment matters.
In a National Government gazette on 22 May 2026, President Cyril Ramaphosa gave immediate effect to additional sections of Act 16.
The new sections 30A and 30B prescribe significant changes for public companies’ remuneration disclosures and approvals.
The new laws dictate that these companies must prepare a prospective remuneration policy to be approved by shareholders at an annual general meeting (AGM) every three years.
In addition to the approved remuneration policy, state-owned companies’ remuneration reports will need to have a background statement and an implementation report.
The implementation report is required to contain several pieces of remuneration data that Eskom has omitted in its integrated annual reports and other publicly available documents, including:
- Total remuneration of the highest-paid and lowest-paid employees.
- Average and median total remuneration of all employees.
- A remuneration gap ratio, reflecting the ratio between the total remuneration of the top 5% highest-paid employees and the total remuneration of the bottom 5% lower-paid employees.
The implementation report also requires state-owned companies to report the total remuneration of each director and prescribed officer.
Those are the only figures that Eskom currently divulges at a per-employee level in its integrated annual report.
While many other state-owned entities also don’t share highly detailed employee salary information, several go well beyond Eskom’s data.
The power utility provides minimal remuneration information. It only provides its total employee cost and the staff count.
Therefore, analysts and the media are forced to use a simple calculation for some indication of an average: dividing the total wage bill by the number of employees.
In its 2025 financial year, Eskom’s average annual cost per employee was R1.26 million excluding executives and board members.
Huge increase in bonuses
Eskom has criticised news publications and analysts for reporting this as its average remuneration, arguing it is not reflective of what workers on the ground really earn.
Solidarity secretary-general Gideon du Plessis recently revealed that the average remuneration of Eskom’s bargaining unit, which makes up over two-thirds of its workforce, was about R457,800 per year.
Eskom also argued its remuneration must be viewed in the context of the organisation’s “evolution” since 1990.
“Increases in remuneration reflect this shift in workforce composition, compliance with modern labour legislation, and the need to retain critical skills to sustain reliable electricity supply,” it said.
Eskom has refused to provide more detailed breakdowns of its employee remuneration, including salary bands, median salaries, or average salaries.
Eskom said its remuneration and benefits framework was designed to attract, retain and motivate a skilled and high-performing workforce.
“Our approach balances financial sustainability with the need to reward excellence and support employee wellbeing.”
“Our remuneration strategy is underpinned by principles of fairness, transparency and alignment with Eskom’s turnaround objectives and subject to the conditions of the Eskom Debt Relief Act, 2023.”
Between its 2024 and 2026 financial years, Eskom’s employee remuneration increased 37%, mainly due to short-term incentives and production bonuses.
The average bonus paid per employee was R128,000, more than what most South Africans earned in a year.
While Eskom has defended the remuneration as justified when considering the improved performance of its generating fleet, economist Dawie Roodt has likened this to “praising a duck for swimming.”
Roodt said the main reason load-shedding has ended is due to a reduction in demand, driven by an increase in private electricity generation.
He argued that load-shedding should never have happened and that Eskom workers were mostly overpaid and underworked.
Democratic Alliance MP Kevin Mileham also recently called on Ramokgopa to intervene in what he dubbed “exorbitant” payouts and to redirect funds toward lowering the cost of electricity.
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