[imagesource: Sumaya Hisham / Reuters]

Heading up Eskom is a pretty thankless task, aside from the millions you’ll be taking home each year, of course.

The reality is that, after years of being left to fall into disrepair and dodgy contracts and all the usual state-owned enterprise antics, CEO André de Ruyter knows that his back is against the wall, and tough times lie ahead.

During a Cape Town Press Club event yesterday, de Ruyter detailed how the COVID-19 outbreak thwarted refurbishment and repair efforts, and stated that this meant the inevitable was bound to happen.

Reporting below via TimesLIVE:

“It’s likely that we will have increased load-shedding going forward. I think that there is a risk of load-shedding going forward given the lack of predictability, the lack of reliability due to the maintenance that was not done,” he said…

“When you defer maintenance, you borrow from the future at an extortionist interest rate. This is the situation Eskom finds itself in now”…

If the units were not taken down for refurbishment now the country could expect significantly worse load-shedding in the coming years, he warned.

The live-streamed event featured a slideshow from de Ruyter, mapping out the positive changes he intended to implement in coming years, whilst at the same time talking of the “utility death spiral”.

Those last two aren’t words you want to hear in relation to your country’s power supplier.

De Ruyter also defended the upcoming electricity price hike, saying Eskom provided some of the cheapest benchmark prices in the world.

You can read that full report here.

When you combine the inevitability of load shedding for years to come, and the price hike, the need to exist off that grid becomes all the more obvious.

Sadly for residents of Cape Town, there has been a legal setback on that front, reports BusinessTech:

The City of Cape Town’s attempt to secure South African municipalities the legal right to select their electricity suppliers has been set back by a court ruling that it must first exhaust negotiations with the government on the matter…

Had it won the case, the city of four million people had planned to set up its own power-purchasing office, which would secure supplies within six years.

Like a loveless marriage, we’re all stuck with Eskom for the time being.

At least we suffer together.

[sources:timeslive&bustech]