{"id":649624,"date":"2026-05-25T13:05:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=649624"},"modified":"2026-05-25T13:09:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:09:34","slug":"state-owned-company-paid-its-ceo-r11-7-million-after-it-received-a-massive-taxpayer-funded-bailout-from-the-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/columns\/649624-state-owned-company-paid-its-ceo-r11-7-million-after-it-received-a-massive-taxpayer-funded-bailout-from-the-government.html","title":{"rendered":"State-owned company paid its CEO R11.7 million after it received a massive taxpayer-funded bailout from the government"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

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

In addition, Eskom increased the number of employees from 40,625 to 42,030, even as the company is looking to cut costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in the power producer’s total employee cost ballooning by R8.3 billion in a year \u2014 from R37.1 billion to R45.4 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom faced such severe financial and operational problems that it required an intervention from the National Treasury to stay afloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Since the initial announcement, the structured five-year layout has shifted to the government directly taking over roughly R230 billion in loans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, taxpayers had to step in to save Eskom, which has been financially ruined by years of corruption and mismanagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 31 March 2025, Eskom had received a total of R140 billion in support since the implementation of the Eskom Debt Relief Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

However, in Eskom’s case, it employed more people and significantly increased their basic salaries and bonuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom’s big salary increases in 2025 and its lagging performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the 2025 financial year, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane was paid R11.728 million, which included a basic salary of R9 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was significantly higher than his predecessor, Andr\u00e9 de Ruyter, who, on average, earned around R7 million per year during his tenure as Eskom chief executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

It then announced new targets. They set clear EAF benchmarks of 60% by March 2023, 65% by March 2024, and 70% by March 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 2025 financial year, Eskom only achieved an energy availability factor of 60.6%, well below the 70% target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite missing this core performance metric by a country mile, Eskom celebrated its performance and rewarded everyone handsomely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering these facts, it is not difficult to see why many South African taxpayers are not fond of what is happening at Eskom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an opinion piece.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eskom CEO salary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Average salary at Eskom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Eskom’s employee cost increase<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Eskom average employee salary increase<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eskom increased its chief executive’s salary by nearly R5 million in the 2025 financial year, despite the company being in serious financial distress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":649630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[61891,31156,98336,181],"class_list":["post-649624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","tag-andre-de-ruyter","tag-dan-marokane","tag-eaf","tag-eskom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649624"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649624"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":649656,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649624\/revisions\/649656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}