I remember going on a visit to Palmiet during my masters, and one of the things we discussed was the movement towards deregulating Eskom.

At that stage there was a general worldwide move towards deregulation of electrical grids, but that lead to a number of issues all over the world, particularly in California.

Essentially this process would have opened up the market to new players. Similarly to the Telkom situation we have a single supplier that the whole country is dependant on. Until now, Eskom has done a pretty good job of making sure we have electricity, and that we have it at a really cheap rate (SA's abundance of coal helps with this).

One of the things that would have come out of this is that private entities and individuals would have been able to sell electricity to Eskom.

Surely it would make sense to make strong moves towards this? There would then be an incentive for private investment in the energy industry in SA. It would have to be strongly regulated to ensure the stability of the national grid, but could open up a whole new industry.