[Listen to Kevin Mileham MP – DA Spokesperson on Electricity and Energy Speak on This]
Dear Editor
The DA has today written to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thoko Didiza, requesting that Parliament holds a debate of national importance on the rapidly rising cost of electricity which is becoming increasingly unaffordable for many South African households.
The decision by NERSA to grant Eskom’s application to retrospectively recover R8 billion through its Regulatory Clearing Account for the 2021/2022 financial year, which will translate to a 4% tariff increase in 2025 – and Eskom’s application for a further 36,15% tariff increase in 2025, will effectively price many households out of the electricity market and increase energy poverty to levels not seen since the dawn of democracy.
According to a leaked document showing Eskom’s tariff increase application to NERSA for the next 3 financial years, the power utility is seeking above-inflation and double-digit increases that will make electricity simply unaffordable:
- 2025/2026: 36.15%
- 2026/2027: 11.81%
- 2027/2028: 9.1%
According to the South Africa Reserve Bank, between 2007 and 2022, the average Eskom tariff increased by 450% while inflation increased by only 129% over the same period. What this means is that electricity tariffs have increased four-fold (or quadrupled) in real money terms in 14 years.
Electricity tariffs have reached crisis levels and there is now a real risk that South African households could become trapped in a permanent high cost of living environment due to sky high electricity prices.
Uninterrupted power supply has left many South Africans with a lot less to cheer about as loadshedding relief has quickly turned into a financial nightmare. The double digit tariff increases that have been granted to Eskom over the past few years forced many to choose between putting food on the table or keeping the lights on. No one should be forced to make this choice, especially considering that many food poverty levels at household level are still high due to high prices.
The recent announcement by the Ministry of Energy and Electricity to review the electricity pricing model is welcome but the depth of the electricity price crisis requires that the government moves with urgency.
The Eskom monopoly has become inefficient, and the cost of that inefficiency is now being passed on to consumers. It does not help that the current electricity pricing policy is more biased towards setting tariffs that reward Eskom inefficiency while failing to balance this with consumer affordability.
Regards
Kevin Mileham MP
DA Spokesperson on Electricity and Energy
The Dude
Hayibo! – wow! [Hai-bo] Derived from the Zulu word meaning “definitely not!” This word is usually expressed on its own, at the start or end of a sentence when something seems unbelievable.Example: “Hayibo! Ha! Ha! I can’t believe that!”
Pistol Hydro
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.