{"id":1097,"date":"2022-10-11T07:19:40","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T07:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2026-03-18T11:46:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:46:27","slug":"eskom-cannot-be-saved-here-is-how-it-will-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/2022\/10\/11\/eskom-cannot-be-saved-here-is-how-it-will-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom cannot be saved \u2013 here is how it will end"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt said Eskom is financially and operationally unsalvageable and will come to the same end as South African Airways (SAA).<\/p>\n

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan appointed a new Eskom board with a mandate to increase the energy availability factor (EAF) to 75%.<\/p>\n

Many people, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, backed the new board to address load-shedding and other problems at the power utility.<\/p>\n

Roodt is less optimistic, saying the new Eskom board will not be able to save the company and put an end to load-shedding.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a\u00a0Free Market Foundation webinar<\/strong>, he said that to see how the \u201cEskom movie will play out\u201d, you merely have to look at what happened to another state-owned enterprise \u2013 SAA.<\/p>\n

\u201cSAA had ten turnaround plans, and they all failed. The company was ultimately run into the ground financially and operationally,\u201d he said. \u201cEskom will go the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roodt said Gordhan, with a strong communist bias, is partly to blame for the problems at SAA and Eskom.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The best way to handle Eskom is to treat it like a private sector company and place it into business rescue.<\/p>\n

Roodt said this would mean tens of thousands of Eskom employees will and must lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the only way you will save Eskom and the country. You have to fix it the same way you will fix a private sector company,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot give Eskom employees a 7% increase when the company is bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roodt said Eskom will get privatised, whether the government likes it or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cEskom has been run into the ground, and the only way to get reliable electricity is for the private sector to provide it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Roodt\u2019s view may seem radical, but it is not far away from what Eskom employees have been saying.<\/p>\n

One Eskom executive, who asked to remain anonymous, told Daily Investor that the only solution to problems at most of Eskom\u2019s power stations is to dismiss all staff and re-employ the best ones.<\/p>\n

He said corruption, apathy, and poor standards are so entrenched at Eskom that it is impossible to change.<\/p>\n

He added that only a small group of Eskom employees are trying to keep things together, while the others are either dead-wood \u2013 or worse.<\/p>\n

Daily Investor asked Eskom for feedback on its operational challenges, but the company did not respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt said Eskom is financially and operationally unsalvageable and will come to the same end as South African Airways (SAA).…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innov8ions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1101,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innov8fs.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}