Eskom's court application opposing the National Energy Regulator of South Africa's decision to issue five new electricity trading licences is not only regressive - it is dangerously disingenuous.

In a filing to the Gauteng Division of the High Court on 24 July 2025, Eskom alleges that the National Energy Regulator of South Africa's (Nersa) decision represents a radical and unconsulted "new policy" threatening to "upend the entire landscape of electricity provision" in South Africa.

This accusation reeks of institutional amnesia, denialism and resistance to long-standing reform commitments that Eskom itself has acknowledged for decades.

Let us be clear: the liberalisation of South Africa's electricity sector is not new.

The notion of third-party electricity trading, open access to the grid and competitive supply was explicitly articulated as early as 1998 in the White Paper on the Energy Policy of the Republic of South Africa.

The emergence of electricity traders is not a deviation - it is the fulfilment of a long-standing policy commitment. Eskom knows this.

That seminal document - endorsed by the government and cited countless times by Eskom itself - called for the unbundling of Eskom and the creation of a competitive electricity supply industry to...