Tag: Eskom

South African Airways’ sometimes-controversial CEO, Vuyani Jarana, has resigned. When the news broke on Sunday, many were caught by surprise, perhaps because it follows only a week after the resignation of another state-owned enterprise (SOE) CEO, Eskom’s Phakamani Hadebe.

Have members of the ruling party committed treason through bringing about the energy crisis? Whilst treason is broadly defined as ‘the crime of betraying one’s country’, what constitutes treason differs from country to country.

Many organisations are reluctant to manage their ethics performance. Why? When leading practice has moved beyond the question of whether ethics can actually be ‘managed’ (taking it as given that it can), and huge efforts are underway getting the ‘how’ of ethics management right as well, it seems perverse to ignore this aspect of organisational life.

If you counted every hair on your head, that amount probably will not add up to the amount of times you have read and heard about the causes of the Eskom crisis. Corruption and state capture have been identified as the bedrock reasons why South Africans have been thrown into darkness over the past two weeks. A few people have pinpointed the unions as the cause of the problem because they are enraged about President Ramaphosa’s announcement that Eskom will be unbundled. Yet others have laid the blame on transformation policies, specifically BEE.

In the 2019 State of the Nation Address, our President set out an ambitious agenda for our nation. It is an agenda that speaks to the South Africa that we can be. It is a task list for all of us. It lays out a series of interventions that will put South Africa on a bold new path.

Although South African business leaders may feel somewhat besieged by bad news and murmurs of ‘unbearable’ Eskom tariff hikes, tech-fuelled innovation is providing business with new options to lower energy consumption.

With the long-awaited Carbon Tax Bill now expected to be implemented in June of 2019, businesses still have some time to develop new energy strategies that can help to reduce their carbon footprint.

Industry grinds to a halt. Traffic stands gridlocked. Lights in dangerous areas go out. People sit in the dark. Whereas Christmas should usher in a time of jovial spirit, this December once again brings in load-shedding for South Africans.

A market for electricity has a salutary effect on the behaviour of all the participants in the generation and supply of electricity. Generating plants, transmission grids, distribution grids, wholesalers and retailers, all behave differently when they compete for business with alternative suppliers.

In July this year, Eskom released their much-delayed financial results. Poor results revealed, amongst others, a net loss of R2.3 billion and an amount of R19.6 billion that was attributed to irregular expenditure.