AfriForum seeks urgent court order against NERSA’s silence on R54 billion error
AfriForum has applied to the High Court in Pretoria for an urgent court order against the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). This follows 90 days having elapsed without NERSA providing reasons for its decision earlier this year to approve an additional tariff adjustment of more than R54 billion for Eskom. NERSA is legally obliged to explain this decision. NERSA announced in February that additional electricity tariff increases of 8,76% for the 2026/2027 financial year and 8,83% for the 2027/2028 financial year had been approved for Eskom. These increases come in addition to tariff increases that had already been approved to compensate for calculation errors in the original tariff determination.
AfriForum’s application for a court order therefore follows a court battle to get the two role players (NERSA and Eskom) to disclose information about this calculation error and to give the public, who are directly affected by the pricing, a chance to comment meaningfully. The organisation is now asking the court to hear the matter on 14 July and to review the entire R54 billion decision. If successful, it will unfortunately only be applicable to the last year of the three-year agreement.
AfriForum first wrote to the regulator on 12 March to request the Reason for Decision document, which according to NERSA’s own guidelines always forms part of the multi-year tariff determination application (MYPD). In response to the letter, NERSA informed AfriForum that the document would be approved by 31 March, after which AfriForum followed up again on 2 April regarding the status of the matter. Although NERSA also acknowledged receipt of the second letter, the full reasons for its revised decision remain unknown. The document must also indicate how public participation influenced the process, or not.
AfriForum later instructed its legal team to address the matter in a formal letter to NERSA, but the regulator again failed to provide the required document. NERSA repeatedly requested further extensions, saying the report amendments had still not been approved by its executive committee in the past three months.
The full reasons for Eskom’s tariff determination are the source document for the subsequent Eskom Retail Tariff and Structural Adjustment application (ERTSA) in which Eskom then applies for a year’s costs to be recovered from its customers and which is also subject to a public participation process. “The absence of reasons for the decision raises doubts about the public participation process and whether anyone ever listens to the consumer, who ultimately has to pay for everything,” explains Dalena Beyers, AfriForum’s Advisor for Local Government Affairs.
“NERSA has an important role to play in protecting the consumer against the monopoly of Eskom, but it appears reluctant to take decisive action,” continues Beyers. “And it’s not just at the national level that NERSA bows to the needs of Eskom; the regulator is also conspicuous by its absence where residents suffer from poor municipal electricity supply. In fact, NERSA should cancel every municipality’s electricity supply license if they don’t deliver quality service, but that doesn’t happen anywhere. One failing institution protects another and the same pattern is evident in the lack of transparency surrounding NERSA’s most important annual decision: determining how much Eskom may charge consumers for the electricity it supplies.”
