Eskom sabotage disappears

Sabotage of Eskom’s infrastructure has seemingly ended following efforts from law enforcement agencies and changes to how the utility conducts maintenance.

In previous years, the utility had been plagued by deliberate actions to disrupt power generation at its stations and electricity transmission across the country. 

During his tenure as CEO of Eskom, Andre de Ruyter regularly cited a “sustained campaign of sabotage” as one of the main reasons behind load-shedding in South Africa. 

De Ruyter said this campaign lasted for years and crippled the utility’s operations. He outlined specific examples of sabotage in an affidavit from a court case last year. 

“Eskom’s various power stations have experienced widespread sabotage, criminality, and destructive and unlawful industrial action,” De Ruyter said. 

He explained that sabotage was not the only factor in the utility’s dismal performance last year but that “it is clear that damage to Eskom property and operations has been deliberate”.

De Ruyter suggested the sheer number of incidents of damage to Eskom’s equipment “overwhelmingly confirms” that the utility experienced a sustained sabotage campaign. 

Eskom’s former CEO estimated that sabotage alone was responsible for around two stages of load-shedding. 

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa also flagged sabotage at the utility as a major reason behind its deteriorating performance. 

Ramokgopa warned that sabotage would offset any progress made in improving Eskom’s reliability and efforts to reduce load-shedding. 

“We are placing significant amounts of effort in ensuring that we protect these assets and defend the gains we have made,” he said. 

The minister said he was “more than confident that we will get to the bottom of this” because “if we do not solve this, all of our efforts are going to be undermined”. 

However, these instances of sabotage appear to have ended in 2024 in combination with Eskom’s improved performance. 

In response to questions from Daily Investors, Eskom said sabotage had not impacted its operations in the current financial year. 

This sudden decline in sabotage cases at Eskom and their reduced effect on its operations comes after a slight increase in the number of cases the utility reported to the police in the 2023 financial year. 

Eskom has attributed this sharp decline in sabotage to collaboration with law enforcement agencies, including the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). 

The SANDF has been deployed to several Eskom power stations and key infrastructure since December 2022, with its deployment subsequently extended to March 2025. 

Since the army was first deployed in December 2022, it has cost taxpayers around R461 million to keep watch at Eskom’s stations. 

In its response, Eskom said it has also improved its crime-fighting capabilities. In particular, it has enhanced its prevention, monitoring, and detection strategies across the Generation business. 

However, another key reason is that Eskom uses original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to conduct maintenance at its power stations. 

Eskom’s turnaround in recent months has been a direct result of better equipment maintenance, which has reduced the number of breakdowns and prevented units from tripping shortly after returning to service. 

Professor Hartmut Winkler from the University of Johannesburg explained that this shift has also greatly reduced sabotage at Eskom’s power stations. 

Using OEMs for maintenance enables Eskom to enter into service-level agreements for maintenance, making it easier for the utility to hold service-providers to account. 

In this case, if maintenance is inadequate and the unit trips shortly after returning to service, the OEM fixes it at their own cost. This incentivises them to conduct high-quality maintenance. 

Previously, most maintenance was conducted by contractors. This created an incentive for power stations to experience frequent breakdowns, creating more work for contractors. 

This resulted in many of them conducting poor maintenance and, in some cases, engaging in sabotage to prolong contracts or get new business. 

The shift to OEMs has greatly reduced the amount of sabotage at Eskom power stations, contributing to enhanced reliability across the utility’s fleet.