Price of Light: South Africa’s Electricity Reform

Front page of The Citizen, a South African newspaper, with the phrase “Eskom ate my homework,” a satirical take on the power outages. Photo courtesy of openverse.

At any moment, a South African neighborhood can go from bright to dark. These regular power cuts, known as “load shedding,” are meant to reduce pressure on the country’s overburdened electric grid. South Africans are used to this; while the average American faces fewer than ten hours of blackouts in a year, South Africans may experience that many in a single weekend.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has recently invited independent power producers (IPPs) to compete with Eskom, the state electricity public utility monopoly, with hopes of reviving the nation’s inadequate grid. When Ramaphosa came to power in 2018, he inherited an Eskom already in crisis: financially strained and operationally unreliable. Failing to deliver consistent electricity, it was also riddled with corruption scandals and inefficiency. Businesses had to turn to diesel generation, which costs eight times as much as Eskom, just to keep operating. 

In his 2019 State of the Nation address, Ramaphosa pledged to restructure Eskom and the country’s electric infrastructure. Yet, analysts argue that the measures he has taken so far have failed to meet demand. Following his promise, in 2021, he proposed opening the sector to private investment to stabilize the grid. While this approach is aimed at improving access to efficient electricity, it also raises questions about inequality. As economist Thomas Piketty warns, reforms that ignore questions of distribution often reinforce existing inequalities and hierarchies. This concern may especially reverberate in South Africa, as privatization could reproduce the disparities of the past by concentrating opportunities and resources in the hands of a privileged minority.

To understand the overarching effects of privatization, it is important to recall the legacy of apartheid, a system that segregated South Africa into rigid socio-political classes based on race until 1994. Under apartheid, Black people were forcibly removed from their homes in white areas and denied access to basic economic opportunities. In the post-apartheid era, access to power and resources became intertwined with South Africa’s larger “rainbow nation” vision of equality and citizenship. This vision brought ideals of racial reconciliation and inclusive development to the forefront of policy goals. South Africa’s constitution emphasized unity and development from the beginning, echoing these principles. Following this ideal, electricity became a symbol of the new social contract, representing dignity and shared progress. Since Black South Africans were consistently denied basic infrastructure during apartheid, providing public services equally was an important part of restoring dignity and state-building from scratch. 

For a time, Eskom embodied these principles and aspirations. Their 1995 annual report emphasized Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) goals, including expanding the grid and ensuring that at least 50 percent of employees are Black South African. However, three decades later, these promises remain unfulfilled. Today, white neighborhoods and industries still receive reliable power, while many Black communities are left in the dark, reflecting the divide that apartheid created. 

Eskom’s ongoing failures fueled support for privatization efforts, initially championed by the Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party in South Africa. As the public system continues to fail many, DA-run municipalities have encouraged private investment in the electricity sector. Most notably, in Cape Town, the DA-managed municipal government established a procurement programme for IPPs, issuing its first tender in 2022. The result was glaring. While the majority of the country experiences outages, most of Cape Town remains lit with fewer and shorter service interruptions. 

Cape Town’s story, though, is not a story of better management. The City of Cape Town stands out for its significant white population, which stands at around 14 percent of the city’s populace, compared to the national average of 7.2 percent. The city benefits from deep structural advantages rooted in apartheid, as predominantly white areas receive greater infrastructure investment. Today, despite being a minority, white South Africans still control the majority of the country’s wealth, and consequently, municipal services and infrastructure continue to favor areas that are historically well-resourced and white. As electricity markets expand, the risk is clear: existing inequalities are likely to grow, and the benefits will flow to those historically positioned to profit. 

The debate of privatizing the electrical sector is much more than simple infrastructure. It is about the ways power—both electrical and political—is defined, allocated, and justified. In the early years of South Africa’s democracy, electricity was a moral responsibility for the state. Today, policymakers increasingly speak in the language of markets and efficiency, with government officials presenting IPPs as a tool to drive down prices and boost competition rather than treating electricity as a public good. As political theorist Steven Lukes reminds us, real power lies not only in decision-making or picking a side, but also in setting the terms of debate. When electricity is framed as a commodity rather than a right, market language becomes the default, and its logic is used as a guise to dismiss inequality. As a result, disparity is more easily accepted as the cost of doing business.

Social theorist Karl Polanyi offers a similar warning, arguing that markets do not exist in isolation from society. When essential goods like electricity are treated as a product rather than as a necessary tool for a decent life, they are stripped of their function in providing everyday stability and dignity, and society itself begins to fray. Access becomes determined by purchasing power rather than political community. Without renewed commitments to redistribution and public purpose, privatization could hollow out the developmental vision that once defined South Africa’s energy policy. 

South Africa’s electricity reforms may successfully stabilize the supply of electricity for some. However, without policies that confront the injustices of the past, millions will still be left waiting for the lights to come on. The future of electricity in South Africa, whether it remains a right, becomes a commodity, or lands somewhere in between, will not only shape who gets power but also the kind of society that emerges from the dark.

Zeynep Helva, Fordham University ’26, is a senior majoring in political science with a minor in peace and justice studies on the pre-law track. Now based in New York City, she has lived in Türkiye, Malawi, and South Africa. Her international background deepens her commitment to examining how political structures influence justice and daily life. She can be reached at zeynephelva2@gmail.com.