New rules governing electricity trading in South Africa are imminent, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane has said, while defending the utility’s controversial court challenge over trading licences and suggesting critics who call it anticompetitive either haven’t read the draft rules or have “read them and not understood them”.
In an opinion piece published in Business Day on Monday, Marokane wrote that Eskom was branded obstructionist less than a year ago for challenging the risks of implementing market reforms before trading rules were in place, but that rules informed by international experience will soon be finalised — the product, he argued, of Eskom having the conviction to approach the courts, a move he cast as protecting all South Africans, especially the most vulnerable.
Eskom went to court over Nersa’s granting of electricity trading licences, arguing — as Marokane restates in the piece — that the licences enabled new market entrants to avoid contributing billions of rand towards subsidies and essential public interest obligations.
The litigation was suspended in January to allow engagement on new rules, with the Energy Council of South Africa facilitating talks between Eskom, the SA Local Government Association and traders on volume restrictions, non-bypassable charges and phased retail competition. Marokane pointed to jurisdictions such as the Philippines, California and Texas, where customers choose their electricity supplier but still contribute towards non-bypassable system costs that prevent market failure.
The rules matter to the traders Nersa has licensed, which have been waiting for a functioning market in which to operate.
The opinion piece also reveals how actively Eskom is preparing to compete in the market it fought over. Its distribution division has procured systems to support day-ahead, intraday and balancing market trading, portfolio and position management, settlement, and credit monitoring.
Heightened tension
It has also partnered with Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town to develop retail market instruments — including a retail tariff code and cost pass-through mechanisms — that will be handed to Nersa for public consultation on regulating the retail market. In June, Eskom approved a wheeling policy allowing independent power producers and off-takers to wheel electricity across municipal networks.
Marokane’s remarks come amid heightened tension over electricity reform.
Read: Memo to Eskom: Telkom already lost this fight
Last week, Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati clashed publicly with Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busi Mavuso over a separate reform question — whether the transmission grid’s assets should move to the planned independent transmission system operator, as President Cyril Ramaphosa has directed, or remain within Eskom. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
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