Eskom
State-owned company Eskom is supposed to supply 80% of South Africa with electricity. In 2023 however, South Africans were out of power for 6,947 hours, equivalent to 289 days. Eskom generates 89% of its power from coal, according to GCEL. The company’s coal fleet is ancient, it already reached maximum capacity in 2007. Nonetheless, the company regularly needs to shut down its power plants so they don’t crash entirely. On top, plants frequently break down because of poor maintenance, criminal sabotage and corruption.
In December 2022, André de Ruyter, Eskom’s CEO at the time, was poisoned with cyanide. He barely survived. After he recovered, de Ruyter claimed Eskom would be losing $55 million a month to corruption. In February 2023, news broke that 4 criminal cartels are operating within Eskom. High-level politicians from the governing party ANC as well as staff are involved in corrupt practices. Coal gets delivered to Eskom on trucks mostly. On their way to Eskom’s facilities, staff swap high-quality coal for rubble. They sell the high-quality coal while Eskom’s coal plants are breaking because of the rubble. Others order knee pads for extortionate $4,422 instead of the normal price of $17. There is evidence of staff hiding materials they still have in stock and then ordering them again. They receive an empty delivery, retrieve the hidden materials and cash in the money.
Corruption and coal are similarly deeply entrenched to Eskom’s DNA. Eskom’s plans to runs some of its coal plants until the late 2060s. Two of these plants, Medupi and Kusile, are still under construction. Medupi and Kusile should’ve originally gone online 10 years ago. The cherry on top is Kusile's excemption from the actual air emissions standards. It is now allowed to release even more sulfur dioxide, until its broken chimneys are repaired. Even without this exemption, Eskom was rated the world’s most polluting power company.
