{"id":644955,"date":"2026-05-05T17:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=644955"},"modified":"2026-05-06T06:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:34:51","slug":"conspiracy-to-collapse-eskom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/644955-conspiracy-to-collapse-eskom.html","title":{"rendered":"President Ramaphosa’s government accused of actions that can botch Eskom’s unbundling and collapse the company"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Solidarity secretary-general Gideon du Plessis speculated that President Ramaphosa’s government may be deliberately rushing Eskom’s unbundling to benefit connected private renewable energy companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theory was part of an opinion piece that Du Plessis wrote for Rapport<\/a> in which he discussed the unions’ recent salary negotiations with Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the parties ultimately agreed on a three-year deal with 7% annual increases for Eskom bargaining unit members, Du Plessis said that several pertinent issues remained to be addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One particularly sensitive subject was the acceleration of Eskom’s unbundling into separate generation, renewables, transmission, and distribution entities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Plessis said Solidarity and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) supported unbundling, alongside Eskom’s board and the Energy Council of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Du Plessis said there were mounting concerns about the tempo of the unbundling following President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) in February 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Plessis said that NUM’s government sources had indicated that Ramaphosa would announce that unbundling beyond the separation of Eskom’s transmission unit would be suspended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The opposite happened: The president announced that the unbundling of Eskom’s generation and distribution would be accelerated,” Du Plessis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He also indicated that a task team would be assembled to regularly report to the Presidency regarding progress on the process.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Plessis said that Eskom had concluded that a rushed unbundling was not desirable, based on research and advice from the consultancy firm Kearney. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Kearney references plenty of international examples \u2014 out of Europe, Africa, and South America \u2014 where unbundling went poorly,” Du Plessis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report highlighted that where electricity distribution businesses already had high debt, unbundling from other divisions had further increased debt and, consequently, electricity prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African municipalities owe Eskom Distribution around R110 billion, and National Treasury’s measures to reduce the debt have failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One theory is that a botched unbundling and collapse of Eskom would open the doors for roleplayers in the renewable sector \u2014 primarily those with strong political links to the Presidency,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vested interests in Ramaphosa’s extended family<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Gideon du Plessis, Solidarity secretary-general<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although Du Plessis did not go so far as to name any specific potential beneficiaries, one obvious player that has previously been scrutinised is African Rainbow Energy and Power (AREP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AREP has a 40% stake in renewable energy giant Sola Group, which currently has around 535MW of operational capacity online and another 800MW under construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AREP is owned by African Rainbow Capital, which is majority-owned by Patrice Motsepe, the brother-in-law of President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motsepe previously denied <\/a>that his companies were being favoured by the government for electrification projects and said he did not support the privatisation of Eskom or the sale of any of its assets or entities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time, the 2018 appointment of Jeff Radebe as energy minister added fuel to the allegations, as he was married to another of Motsepe’s sisters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radebe would not keep his post long, however, with Gwede Mantashe replacing him after Ramaphosa’s Cabinet reshuffle in May 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband asked the Presidency and AREP for comment on Du Plessis’s theory, but they did not provide feedback by the time of publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Plessis said that Solidarity and the National Union of Mineworkers were planning to launch a Promotion of Access to Information (PAIA) request regarding the unbundling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The application will seek details about the research or justifications on which an accelerated unbundling was based.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be emphasised that Solidarity is the third largest union representing Eskom workers. The union, therefore, has a vested interest in protecting Eskom jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

High-level fracas <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
President Cyril Ramaphosa (left) and his wife Tshepo Motsepe (right), with the late Winnie Mandela (centre). Photographer: GCIS. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Eskom’s unfolding unbundling process is not only a sensitive labour issue, it has caused internal strife at senior government levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa published a revised Eskom unbundling plan in December 2025, which took the private energy industry and analysts by surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many assumed the plan to split Eskom into three separate entities, first announced in Ramaphosa’s 2020 SONA, would include handing over the transmission assets to the Transmission System Operator (TSO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramokgopa’s new policy envisioned a TSO with assets retained by Eskom under a broader holding group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither Cabinet nor National Treasury was briefed on the policy before its publication, despite the financial modelling for the unbundling still being underway at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics such as the UCT Powerfutures Lab’s professor emeritus Anton Eberhard immediately questioned whether a TSO under Eskom would be able to treat other electricity producers and distributors equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eberhard explained that Ramokgopa was effectively caught between a rock and a hard place, with a conflicted mandate to both protect Eskom’s financial position and advance the industry’s interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Ramaphosa reaffirming the complete separation of the TSO from Eskom in his 2026 SONA, Ramokgopa’s proposed revised policy seems dead in the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom board chairman Mteto Nyati has explained that although Eskom was not married to the idea of retaining the assets, it must be compensated if forced to hand them over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the overall Eskom Group only recently returned to profitability, the transmission division has long been profitable, helping the power utility partially offset losses in its generation and distribution divisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solidarity secretary-general Gideon du Plessis has theorised that the accelerated unbundling of Eskom could collapse the utility, benefitting renewable energy companies with strong political ties. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":616924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[102043,59869],"class_list":["post-644955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-gideon-du-plessis","tag-president-cyril-ramaphosa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644955"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645633,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644955\/revisions\/645633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}