Can Eskom Learn To Think Outside The Grid?

Part of the weirdness lies in the fact that corporations are treated as forests, but not as a collection of trees - that is to say that corporations are considered as single and separate legal entities from their constituent members. This idea makes practical sense, as it provides individuals the legal protection from being held personally responsible up to a point for the actions of the whole, thereby freeing up the organisation to engage in operations without individual-level risk aversion paralysing the company.

Despite the legal distinction, public discourse surrounding an entity like Eskom becomes quite tricky. Yes, we as South Africans treat Eskom as a monolith - so much so that most people would not struggle to give it a personality if pressed - but this does a great disservice to the men and women who are fighting to rectify our country's power grid. Our current power concerns have persisted for a generation: it would not only be madness to attribute long-term structural problems to its current employees, but would also ignore the efforts of these very same employees who continue to serve despite the most intense public scrutiny.

In this vein, the current leadership, under the stewardship of CEO Dan Marokane, should be lauded for their admirable approach to running the utility - the approximately 300 days without power interruptions, as well as the open and frank communication with the public not shying away from difficult topics, but refusing to feed national pessimism, is a tangible good-faith demonstration of a company with an eye to the future. But beyond stable and sensible operations, we have also begun to see greater innovation and an openness to working with the private sector. All in all, if Eskom were a human, he or she may well have experienced a spiritual reawakening.