{"id":23718,"date":"2026-02-13T07:59:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-government-pushing-ahead-with-eskom-break-up-plan\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:29","slug":"sa-government-pushing-ahead-with-eskom-break-up-plan","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-government-pushing-ahead-with-eskom-break-up-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"SA government pushing ahead with Eskom break up plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>South Africa (SA) will push ahead with breaking up power utility Eskom and creating a standalone company to run the transmission grid, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday, a key reform being monitored closely by international investors.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Africa&#8217;s most industrialised economy has been hobbled for years by rolling outages as state owned Eskom struggles with ageing plants and weak finances.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Splitting the company is meant to attract private capital and build a more modern, reliable electricity system. Power transmission is one of the biggest constraints to new electricity supply and economic growth.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In the State of the National Address, Ramaphosa confirmed plans for &#8220;a fully independent state owned transmission entity&#8221; that will own and operate grid assets and the electricity market.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He assigned a task team under the National Energy Crisis Committee to oversee the restructuring and deliver a report within three months with clear implementation timelines.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Ramaphosa&#8217;s announcement follows an update from Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa in December, which proposed keeping transmission assets as an Eskom subsidiary.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;This issue has caused major concern, with international investors and local business leaders starting to question the government&#8217;s commitment to the reform programme,&#8221; said Busisiwe Mavuso, Chief Executive Officer of Business Leadership SA.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Olga Constantatos, Credit Head at Futuregrowth Asset Management, said unbundling Eskom was intended to spur competition and private investment in power generation after decades of monopoly control.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Private sector investment in renewables has already mobilised more than $12.5 billion and added 6 000 megawatts of capacity without weighing on Eskom&#8217;s balance sheet.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22336,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-23718","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"SA will push ahead with breaking up power utility Eskom","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26603,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23718\/revisions\/26603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}