Thulas Nxesi believes the struggling power utility’s privatisation will make electricity too expensive for the poor
Employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi. Picture: GCIS/JAIRUS MMUTLE/FILE PHOTO
“I am not a proponent of privatisation of key state assets,” said Nxesi, who’s also deputy national chair of the SACP. “If you privatise electricity, you can forget about the majority of people having access to electricity — it is going to be very expensive for them. That’s why government steps in when there is market failure.”
“These utilities typically tend to be a problem, but then the ones that have done better are the ones that have done some kind of a wholesale privatisation,” Zahabia Gupta, S&P associate director of sovereign ratings in the Middle East and Africa, said in an interview. “Then the problem at least is no longer the government’s and typically the utilities run better.”
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