The DA will fight tooth and nail against National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s (NERSA’s) upcoming 18.36% increase in electricity tariffs.
The appalling reality is that NERSA sits unaccountable for this huge hike, while all over South Africa it will be local governments forced to implement price hikes. And in a local government election year NERSA will put municipalities in the crosshairs of angry residents.
The NERSA decision on 7 February to rubber-stamp the exact same R54.7 billion revenue adjustment previously set aside by the Pretoria High Court is an unacceptable betrayal of the South African public. This “redetermination”, which arrives at the identical figure Judge Jan Swanepoel dismissed as a “thumb-suck” in December, proves that NERSA’s public consultation process was a cynical charade designed to legalise a repackaged secret deal.
By returning to this arbitrary R54.734 billion figure, NERSA has chosen to side with Eskom against the judiciary and the consumer. This decision will force a staggering compound electricity price hike of 18.36% on South African households over the next two years—an 8.76% increase in 2026/2027 to recover R12 billion, followed by a further 8.83% increase in 2027/2028 to recover R23.013 billion.
This multi-billion rand hole in the utility’s books was not an act of God; it was the direct result of NERSA’s inability to perform basic arithmetic. Chairperson Thembani Bukula admitted in writing that “version control issues” and “data input errors” led to the miscalculation of Eskom’s depreciation allowance. It is irregular and unacceptable that the public is now being billed for the technical ineptitude of highly paid regulatory officials.
NERSA ignored expert submissions from industry, agriculture, and the City of Cape Town, all of which provided evidence that Eskom’s R24.3 billion profit for the half-year ending September 2025 rendered additional hikes unnecessary. Instead, the regulator has prioritised a “utility death spiral” where rising prices drive consumers off-grid, forcing the remaining customers to underwrite Eskom’s historical mismanagement.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) reiterates its demands for immediate accountability:
1. Immediate Resignation of the NERSA Board: The current leadership has proven itself technically and ethically unfit to oversee the R1.2 trillion electricity industry.
2. Forensic Audit of Tariff Calculations: We demand an independent, third-party audit of NERSA’s calculations.
The era of South Africans paying for previous ANC-led National Government’s failures and a legacy of mismanagement is over. The DA will not stand by while NERSA attempts to bill South Africans for its own technical ineptitude. We will fight this in Parliament, through the Public Protector, and all other available avenues until the NERSA board is reconstituted and the consumer is protected.