Towards a South African developmental state: The Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) – victor or villain in this endeavour?

Abstract

Under the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Government has long mooted the notion of becoming a developmental state in response to rising unemployment, inequality and poverty. This idea was moulded along the folds of the rise of economic growth and industrialisation, as experienced by East Asian developmental states such as Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. There would be an attempt to channel the state’s administrative capacities, policies and resources towards attaining national development goals. A developmental state plays an active role in guiding economic development and using the country's resources to meet the needs of the people. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) such as the Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) were meant to be the catalyst in the National Development Plan’s (NDP) bid to reignite the country’s stagnant economy. However, the country's state institutions, administrative capacities and resources have been challenged by the state capture debacle that shed light on the corrupt relationship between the political and business elite. As a lack of effective leadership, mismanagement and a complex regulatory framework appear to be at the core of the crisis at Eskom in particular, the main objective of this paper was to determine to what extent the aforementioned constructs perpetuated the energy crisis at Eskom and in turn, negatively impacted the socio-economic aims of the NDP and South Africa’s endeavour to become a developmental state. To achieve this objective, the paper pursued a qualitative research approach where secondary information about the crisis at Eskom, and South Africa’s goal to become a developmental state, were perused. One of the article’s recommendations was that Eskom's grip on the regional power economy must end and that independent power plants must be enabled.