South Africa may have finally turned the corner on load shedding, but the relief has come with a sting.
While the lights stay on, electricity tariffs have ballooned to levels that are now squeezing households and threatening economic growth, and the government says it can no longer ignore the cost crisis it helped create.
Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa was blunt about the scale of the affordability problem at Eskom’s 2026 winter outlook briefing on Wednesday.
He said electricity availability had been secured, but that the price consumers were paying was having devastating consequences.
“It has a disproportionate adverse impact on the poor,” he said, noting that runaway tariffs rapidly erode disposable income, not just for low-income households, but across the middle class as well.
“As you know, once they erode the disposable income of households, you are undermining GDP, because households account for approximately 60% of GDP.”
The minister acknowledged that solving the affordability crisis now required the same determination that government applied to the supply shortage.
He said government intended to hold future increases to within the multi-year price determination framework.
“The era of double-digit increases is behind us,” Ramokgopa said, adding that diesel consumption, once one of the biggest cost drivers, had already dropped by 60% year on year.
New pricing policy by end of May
Government is preparing to release a comprehensive electricity pricing policy within weeks.
The minister confirmed the document had been cleared by internal processes and was awaiting Cabinet approval before going out for public comment.
He had originally hoped to publish it by the end of April.
“From our side, we are done, just going through a Cabinet process, and I’m confident that at least before the end of May we will be in the public.”
The policy is expected to set out a new, more affordable electricity price path and will include provisions for different categories of users – from energy-intensive industrial consumers to poor households.
On the industrial side, Eskom has already reached a negotiated pricing agreement with major smelters at 62 cents per kilowatt-hour, a deal that Mteto Nyati, the acting board chairperson, said left Eskom financially better off, not worse.
“We are better off as Eskom financially with this deal than we were before,” Nyati said.
“There’s no pass-through to or recourse to other customers required.”
Free basic electricity to be expanded
One of the most significant announcements concerns free basic electricity.
South Africa introduced a policy in 2003 to provide 50 kilowatt-hours free per month to qualifying low-income households, and that threshold has not changed in 23 years.
Ramokgopa said studies conducted by Eskom over that period showed the 50 kWh figure was now inadequate.
“Our view is that we need to revise it, revise it upwards,” he said. The minister added that any increase would be funded from within the existing indigent grant envelope, without seeking additional funds from the National Treasury.
Ramokgopa also pointed to solar-powered micro-grids as a cost-effective delivery mechanism for this expanded benefit, citing successful installations in the villages of Musina.
Eskom’s distribution team confirmed that more than 2 200 customers had already been connected through micro-grids, with plans to scale the programme significantly.
Eskom’s group chief executive, Dan Marokane, noted the utility was targeting R112 billion in cost savings over five years, reductions it intended to pass on to consumers.
He said improved credit ratings, a product of Eskom’s operational turnaround, were also helping reduce the cost of capital, another saving that could ultimately benefit end users.
Load reduction: Seven provinces free by October
While national load shedding has been absent for more than 340 days, millions of customers in certain areas continue to experience what Eskom terms “load reduction”.
Simply defined, load reduction refers to scheduled outages imposed at the distribution level due to illegal connections, infrastructure constraints, and non-payment.
Eskom’s distribution executive, Agnes Mlambo, said 1.69 million customers were still affected, but committed that seven of South Africa’s nine provinces would be completely free of load reduction by October.
KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape were expected to follow by March 2027.
“Most of the provinces are now amber because of the work that we have done,” she said, adding that approximately 300 000 customers had been removed from load reduction schedules since September.
