Speaker,
It is often said that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. In South Africa, we call that energy policy.
For seventeen years, the ANC has promised to fix electricity. Seventeen years of war rooms. Seventeen years of emergency plans. Seventeen years of recovery plans and Presidential announcements.
And still, beneath the spin, the same broken machine remains: monopoly thinking, political delay, municipal collapse, Eskom failure, and consumers paying more for less.
This is Budget Vote 1. This is the Presidency. Responsibility cannot be outsourced.
President Ramaphosa promised reform. Minister Ramokgopa promised pace. Operation Vulindlela promised delivery.
What we got was reform by press release. PowerPoint reform. Not power-sector reform.
Yes, loadshedding has eased.
But fewer blackouts do not mean a repaired electricity system. A patient out of ICU is not cured. South Africa still has electricity that is too expensive, fragile, centralised, and vulnerable to politics.
The numbers are brutal.
Eskom’s standard tariffs rise by 8.76% for direct customers in 2026/27, and municipal tariffs by 9.01%. That follows a 12.74% increase in 2025/26.
That means less electricity for the same prepaid voucher. A pensioner choosing between a heater and groceries. A spaza shop choosing between wages, rent and lights.
Now compare that to Negotiated Pricing Agreements. In April this year, Eskom announced a proposed 62 cents per kilowatt-hour tariff for Samancor Chrome and Glencore-Merafesmelters. We understand industrial distress. We understand jobs. But government must explain this: why must families absorb double-digit tariff pain while special deals are negotiated behind a velvet curtain of “commercial confidentiality”?
The mother buying R50 of prepaid electricity gets no negotiated pricing agreement. The pensioner in a cold flat gets no reduced tariff. The township spaza owner gets no special dispensation.
They get the bill. That is punishment pricing for citizens, and sweetheart pricing for the connected.
Then there is municipal debt.
In March 2026, Eskom said municipal arrears had passed R110 billion. In May 2026, Eskom named Johannesburg and City Power as owing R5.255 billion in arrears, excluding a further R1.582 billion current account.
It is a governance sinkhole.
The causes are not mysterious: Non-payment. Illegal connections. Meter tampering. Ghost vending. Cable theft. Weak enforcement. Political protection for theft dressed up as compassion.
President Ramaphosa, you do not need another plan. You need the political will to confront the people profiting from failure.
Ring-fence electricity revenue. Install smart prepaid meters. Prosecute ghost vending syndicates. Cut off illegal connections. Protect paying residents. Stop rewarding municipalities that collect from citizens and fail to pay Eskom.
Distribution Agency Agreements may help in some places. But they are not a national solution. They are a band-aid on a bullet hole.
And then we come to Eskom governance.
Eskom confirmed an investigation into diesel procurement and storage contracts under tender MWP2197GX, with an interim report identifying non-adherence to procurement and contract-management processes, and disciplinary action against employees. AmaBhunganereported that this involved a R21 billion diesel contract for Ankerlig, including alleged abnormal prepayments.
Mr President, we have seen this game before. It involved the Guptas and the prepayment to Tegeta for Optimum coal. Only this time, the numbers are much bigger!
Diesel is meant to keep the lights on during emergencies. Under ANC governance, even emergency fuel needs an emergency investigation.
This is why reform cannot crawl.
The Electricity Regulation Amendment Act commenced on 1 January 2025. But a law on paper does not produce a single megawatt.
We are told reform is under way. This House should not measure reform by announcements from the Union Buildings. Measure it by megawatts connected, kilometres of transmission built, municipal debt reduced, and thieves prosecuted.
The market operator must work. The National Transmission Company must be independent. Eskom unbundling must be completed, not performed. Open access must be real. Dispatch must be transparent. Generation must be competitive. The grid operator must be neutral.
The DA argues for a truly independent electricity market operator: a referee, not a player; a market, not a monopoly; competition, not cadre control.
Above all, build the grid!
The Transmission Development Plan requires roughly 14,500 kilometres of new transmission lines and 210 transformers by 2034, with financing needs of about R390 billion.
Without that, reform dies on the road.
Wind in the Cape cannot reach factories in Gauteng. Solar projects wait in queues. Investors walk away. Communities stay poor because the state cannot provide a plug point.
Mr. President, this is the test. Not another committee. Not another promise. Not another fossil fuel dinosaur dragging its tail through the Cabinet room.
Execution.
Liberalise the market. Build the grid. Clean up municipal revenue. End secretive special pricing. Publish the diesel investigation. Prosecute corruption. Protect poor households with targeted support. Let capable municipalities procure power. Let private capital build.
Let South Africans buy electricity from real deliverers.
South Africa is not short of plans. It is short of consequences.
It needs affordable power. Reliable power. Competitive power.
It needs a Presidency that governs, not one that announces; a Minister who executes, not one who explains delay. It needs municipalities that pay, thieves who go to jail, and citizens who are no longer treated as an after-thought.