An urgent court order is sought by AfriForum against Nersa regarding Eskom tariffs.
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AfriForum has applied to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria for an urgent court order against the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) in a bid to obtain answers to the R54 billion Eskom revenue dispute.
The application followed a lapse of 90 days without Nersa providing reasons for its decision earlier this year to approve an additional tariff adjustment of more than R54 billion for Eskom. AfriForum said Nersa is legally obliged to explain this decision.
The regulator 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 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 review the entire R54 billion decision. If successful, it will only be applicable to the last year of the three-year agreement.
AfriForum first wrote to the regulator in 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. AfriForum said it followed up again on April 2 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 said.
It instructed its legal team to address the matter in a formal letter to Nersa, but the regulator again failed to provide the required document. According to AfriForum, 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,” Dalena Beyers, AfriForum’s Advisor for Local Government Affairs said.
In December last year, the court rejected Eskom and Nersa’s attempt to settle the power supplier’s tariff dispute behind closed doors. This was after the proposed R54 billion settlement between the two entities sought to correct an error in Eskom’s allowable revenue determination without the proposed investigations, proper public participation, or referral back to Nersa.
The court reviewed and set aside Nersa’s original revenue decision and refused to make the settlement agreement an order of court. AfriForum intervened after Eskom’s original court application for a review of Nersa’s decision regarding Eskom’s MYPD tariff application was abruptly converted into a settlement agreement.
In its earlier judgment, the court found that Nersa’s revenue decision was unlawful, irrational, and based on material calculation errors and rejected the notion that Eskom and Nersa could correct these errors through a negotiated compromise that bypasses public scrutiny.
The court confirmed that electricity tariff decisions affect all South Africans and that transparency and public participation are non-negotiable components of lawful regulation.