{"id":648515,"date":"2026-05-20T10:01:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=648515"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:06:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:06:46","slug":"former-eskom-ceo-says-three-men-saved-south-africa-from-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/energy\/648515-former-eskom-ceo-says-three-men-saved-south-africa-from-disaster.html","title":{"rendered":"Former Eskom CEO says three men saved South Africa from disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga has said Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Mteto Nyati, and Dan Marokane’s team at the power utility have turned around the biggest power crisis in the country’s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he warned that South Africa isn’t out of the woods and that its power system remains a contested space locally and internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In time, South Africans will come to appreciate what the trio of Ramokgopa, Nyati, and Marokane & Co. saved us from,” Maroga said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“From around 2018, the government was misadvised to attempt to operate one of the largest power systems based on popular myths and sponsored narratives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that the return to fundamentals based on scientific and engineering principles since 2022 has solved South Africa’s energy crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If South Africa were in the European Union, it would be in the top five power systems out of 27 based on installed capacity,” Maroga said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Friday, 15 May 2026, Eskom announced that it hadn’t implemented load-shedding for a year. The last time South Africa didn’t have load-shedding for at least a year was between 2016 and 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This moment has been three years in the making since the inception of the Generation Recovery Plan,” Marokane said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Eskom’s employees have again delivered using their deep technical and institutional capacity built over decades of public investment that remains a critical part of our national capacity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the statement failed to acknowledge the role of private generation and reduced demand in the turnaround.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major factor behind the lack of load-shedding over the past year was the substantial reduction in electricity demand driven by the rapid increase in private power generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa has seen a massive increase in privately generated electricity, primarily from photovoltaic solar power, in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 2018 and the first quarter of 2026, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) registered more than 19,300MW of large-scale private electricity generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the same time, Eskom added less than half that capacity through its controversial coal-fired Medupi and Kusile plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second major factor driving the drop was the shutdown of many industrial facilities, including smelters and factories, due to unsustainable operating costs, including high electricity tariffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sticking to the plan and executing it got us here \u2014 Marokane<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to SAfm<\/a>, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane doubled down on the claim that the Generation Recovery Plan was the primary driver in ending load-shedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, he said it was a combination of strategies executed by Eskom and the Department of Electricity and Energy that drove the turnaround.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are a number of issues, but primarily all of them focused on the execution of our Generation Recovery Plan,” Marokane said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that the plan prioritised maintenance execution, station prioritisation based on condition, staff skilling, and the appointment of appropriate leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Just sticking to that plan and executing it in a disciplined manner got us to where we are,” Marokane said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that the establishment of the Ministry of Electricity and Energy sharpened the focus on ensuring energy security for South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Generation Recovery Plan on its own is one component of that country strategy,” Marokane said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that other aspects of the strategy focused on accelerating capacity from a generation perspective and advancing the transmission development plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom board chair Mteto Nyati applauded Marokane’s team for reaching the milestone, saying it reflected the disciplined execution of the Generation Recovery Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are honoured to be associated with a team that walks the talk every day. Keep it up!” he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be noted that while the Generation Recovery Plan improved Eskom’s average energy availability factor (EAF) by about 10 percentage points since 2023, it was still well below its historical average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around 65% for the year ending March 2026, Eskom’s EAF was at a similar level as in 2020, when it implemented load-shedding for 859 hours, cutting 1,798 gigawatt-hours of demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga also warned that South Africa was not out of the proverbial woods yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":648576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27995],"tags":[31156,181,61121,84835,8487,3192],"class_list":["post-648515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-dan-marokane","tag-eskom","tag-jacob-maroga","tag-kgosientsho-ramokgopa","tag-load-shedding","tag-mteto-nyati"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648515"}],"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\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648515"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648724,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648515\/revisions\/648724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}