The ANC-led Johannesburg government has suddenly found R5.25 billion to settle its overdue Eskom debt, conveniently on the eve of the ANC’s candidate announcements and manifesto weekend.
For months, the DA has been sounding the alarm over this crisis and applying pressure on the City to resolve the Eskom dispute. Residents added their voices through the DA’s petition to stop the Joburg blackout.
That pressure mattered. Johannesburg residents made it clear that they would not accept being punished with power cuts because their City failed to pay its bills.
But the ANC should not mistake paying an overdue bill for fixing City Power.
The fundamental problem remains: City Power’s business model is broken.
Put simply, City Power is not recovering enough money from the electricity it sells to sustainably cover its enormous costs and obligations. Billions are lost through electricity theft, illegal connections, meter bypasses, technical losses, billing failures and poor revenue collection.
City Power recorded a R2.84 billion loss in just the first six months of the 2025/26 financial year. It also spends almost R1.8 billion every month purchasing bulk electricity.
The ANC can celebrate paying yesterday’s debt, but it has still not fixed the system that allowed the debt to accumulate in the first place.
There is another way.
DA-run governments have shown what happens when public money is managed properly. While Cape Town saves, Johannesburg loses.
The DA understands what needs to change in Johannesburg.
We will aggressively tackle illegal connections and electricity theft, improve billing and revenue collection, protect critical electricity infrastructure, cut wasteful expenditure, ring-fence electricity revenue and rebuild City Power into a financially sustainable utility.
The R5.25 billion payment may remove the immediate threat of Eskom cutting electricity supply to parts of Johannesburg.
But it does not fix the underlying crisis.
Johannesburg cannot keep spending tomorrow’s money to pay yesterday’s bills.
The people of Johannesburg deserve a government that pays its bills before they become a crisis, protects the infrastructure residents pay for, and manages public money responsibly.
The DA has demonstrated that good governance can work elsewhere.
On 4 November, Johannesburg has the opportunity to choose it too.