‘Three power entities still state-owned’
THE division of Eskom into three entities should not be seen as privatisation of the indebted electricity supplier, an energy expert says.
But trade unions have promised a fight to the end and say they will not allow the unbundling of the stateowned power utility.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced, during his State of the Nation Address, that Eskom would be divided into three entities for generation, transmission and distribution.
Chris Yelland, an energy expert, said this was a good move and an important first step in the restructuring of the state-owned enterprise because it would lead to the establishment of three companies owned by Eskom as subsidiaries of Eskom Holdings.
“This cannot be seen as privatisation because Eskom is owned by the state and the state will be the owner of the three subsidiaries,” Yelland said.
He said it was an important step that the establishment of a separate, independent, system and market operator would see the state as the shareholder, and not Eskom.
“This can’t be seen as privatisation because these separate companies will be owned by the state,” Yelland said.
However, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) general secretary David Sipunzi said that its members and other workers at Eskom were totally opposed to the privatisation of the power utility to enrich a few elites.
“NUM is against any attempt to unbundle Eskom. It is the privatisation of Eskom to enrich the elites. It is not about saving costs. We, therefore, call upon the government to reconsider its position because it is anti-working class and the poor,” he said.
“It will result in electricity being expensive and it will be unaffordable for the poor. The NUM is going to fight tooth-and-nail against the unbundling of Eskom,” said Sipunzi.
SA Communist Party spokesperson Alex Mashilo said the party did not want to confine itself on whether the president was right or wrong to break the power utility into three entities.
“Ours is to focus on core principles, and those are that we don’t want workers at Eskom to be retrenched. We also want Eskom to remain, in its entirety, fully owned by the state on behalf of the people as a whole to serve its developmental mandate.
“Eskom is heavily indebted and its debt is in the region of R400 billion, and there definitely needs to be an improvement at Eskom in terms of administration, governance, management, operational efficiency and organisational effectiveness,” Mashilo said.
He said that this would ensure that Eskom was repositioned and saved from going under because if the power utility did go under, South Africa would not forgive itself as a nation.
“Nobody will be forgiven and we must not wait for that moment,” Mashilo said.
DA national spokesperson Solly Malatsi said Ramaphosa’s move was something that the DA had advocated.
“We are glad that the president has finally adopted a DA policy by breaking down Eskom into different entities,” said Malatsi.