About 10 million poor households may qualify for free basic electricity; only about 2 million receive it. The first new electricity pricing policy in 18 years still leaves the grant outside the tariff framework.
Eskom estimates about 10 million poor households may qualify for free basic electricity, but only about 2 million actually receive it. Raising the monthly allocation on paper will not close that gap if the registers, claiming process, and who pays are still broken.
Felix Dube in The Conversation (8 September) reads the first new electricity pricing policy in 18 years. It updates the rules for NERSA, Eskom, and municipalities for a system that now includes private generators and mass rooftop solar — and it tries to stop unpaid bills and network losses being dumped onto paying customers. What it does not do is lock free basic electricity to the tariff framework: a separate policy still governs the grant, and the draft only creates an annual review process with Treasury rather than a guaranteed nationwide minimum. Meanwhile tariffs keep climbing — 8.76% for direct Eskom customers from April 2026, 9.01% bulk to municipalities from July — after two decades in which electricity prices rose 1,172% against 174% inflation, and sales fell 6.2% in 2026 as customers self-generate or leave.
That is the live debate under NERSA Municipal Tariff Rationalization and Cost-Reflective Pricing: roughly 160 municipal distributors, weak enforcement of cost-reflectivity, electricity margins still cross-subsidising rates income, and ring-fenced accounts that councils resist. The failure is specific. The market reform path is real; the pricing policy that should make bills fair and protect the poor is still split from the grant that is supposed to reach them. For the deeper frame, read the textbook chapter on Energy, Electricity, and Infrastructure.