Dear Editor
The Democratic Alliance has written to Parliament’s Electricity Committee calling for a serious reprimand of NERSA’s leadership for its ongoing delinquent conduct, highlighted most recently by its significant court loss on Friday.
As South Africans are burdened by obscene electricity price increases, the agency meant to protect electricity consumers against price-gouging, is failing dismally in its legal mandate.
That the Gauteng High Court had to declare the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s (NERSA) process for approving 2025/26 municipal electricity tariffs as constitutionally invalid, is extremely embarrassing for NERSA.
The Court has ordered NERSA to comply with new strict timelines when it considers next year’s electricity pricing tariffs – and DA welcomes that this new model is based on the DA-led City of Cape Town’s proposal forcing NERSA to publish key aspects for public comment by 30 March annually. The public must be given a proper opportunity to play a role in electricity tariffs, so that they cannot be imposed by NERSA on silenced residents.
This ruling is a damning indictment of NERSA, confirming what the DA has long warned: NERSA is failing to act in the interests of South Africans – it goes from mistake to mistake, and failure to failure. NERSA has been repeatedly ordered to ensure tariffs are based on actual, efficient cost-of-supply, as required by the Electricity Regulation Act. Instead of complying, NERSA has simply invented new, equally unlawful “benchmarking” and “assumption” methods to avoid its legal duty.
We still do not have answers on the R54-billion “mistake” NERSA made in the calculation of this year’s tariffs, and now their public consultation process on the cost of supply has also been declared unconstitutional.
Now is the time for Parliament to step in, and enforce accountability.
The DA will closely monitor NERSA’s compliance with this order and continue to fight to ensure that South Africans pay a fair, legal, and transparent price for electricity and not a cent more.
We cannot allow electricity prices to continue to rise, as NERSA bungles the legal process to set the annual tariffs.
Regards
Kevin Mileham MP
DA Spokesperson on Electricity & Energy