Future of ESKOM

In his state of the nation address, President Cyril Ramaphosa committed to a number of structural reforms for the country’s electricity public utility, Eskom. He said that Eskom would be unbundled into three separate entities; namely generation, transmission and distribution. President Ramaphosa’s utterances come three months away from South Africa’s elections in May and at a time when the power utility is facing a major financial and governance crisis. In November Eskom forecasted a loss of 2 billion US dollars for the 2018/19 financial year, with a further loss of 3 billion US dollars forecast for 2019/20. But will this plan to separate Eskom be that silver bullet to fix all the problems at the power utility? How will it affect jobs?To help us unpack the discussion we are joined in studio by:• Happy Khambule, Greenpeace Africa, political advisor • Sikhonathi Mantshantsha is the Deputy editor Financial Mail