President Cyril Ramaphosa Signs Electricity Regulation Amendment Act Into Law

• President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed a law that will come into effect on 1 January 2025
• The Electricity Regulation Amendment Act seeks to provide an open market system that enables the wholesale buying and selling of electricity
• Two sections of the Act will come into operation on a date the president will determine

With nine years of experience, Tebogo Mokwena, a Briefly News current affairs journalist, provided insights into infrastructure challenges and state-owned enterprises in South Africa at Daily Sun and Vutivi Business News.

JOHANNESBURG — President Cyril Ramaphosa has levelled the playing field after signing the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act into law and announcing it will be effective in January. Two sections of the law will come into operation at a later stage.

Ramaphosa signs bill into law

The National Assembly passed the regulations in March 2024, and Ramaphosa signed them into law in August. The Act states that the Transmission System Operator SOC Ltd must be established within five years. The functions of the system operators include serving as a marketing operator that provides a transparent and non-discriminatory trading platform for power market participants to trade.

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Functions of the new SOE

The Act further stated that the trading platform is envisaged to be a competitive multimarket structure to regulate independent producers' buying and selling of electricity. The Act also said that anyone found in possession of stolen cable or Eskom infrastructure would be fined R5 million or sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Recently, the police arrested a man in Durban in September after R20 million worth of cable was found on his premises.

In December, Eskom spoke to Briefly News about the scourge of infrastructure theft and damage. This was after a substation in Sebokeng was vandalised, resulting in a power cut that lasted two days between 7 and 9 December.

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In another article, Briefly News reported that the South African Police Service arrested a group of men for stealing cables. The cables they stole were worth R250,000, and six were arrested.

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The members of the public alerted the police to the crime. When the officers arrived at the substation, they found the cables in the car they had been in.

Source: Briefly News