One market, two clocks: what South Africa’s trading rules are actually deciding
NERSA extended the comment window on the third version of the South African Wholesale Electricity Market rules to 28 August after stakeholders asked for more time. Eskom’s court challenge to five trading licences is stayed rather than withdrawn, which makes the drafting a negotiation as much as a consultation.
For a century, buying electricity in South Africa meant buying it from Eskom. The utility generated it, transmitted it and in most cases distributed it, and no customer connected to the national grid had an alternative supplier. Phase 1 of the market now being drafted allows large customers connected at transmission and high voltage to source part of their energy from licensed traders instead.
The third version of the rules was released in June, and NERSA has extended the comment deadline to 28 August after stakeholders asked for more time with a long and technically dense document. That extension is more consequential than it appears.
Eskom filed a court challenge in July 2025 against five trading licences NERSA had approved, on the grounds that competition had been permitted before the rules governing it were finalised. The utility and the licensed traders agreed in early 2026 to pause that litigation so the rule-making could run its course. The case is stayed rather than withdrawn, and Eskom has kept the option of reviving it if the finalised rules fail to address its objections, particularly on non-bypassable charges and the pace at which the market opens.
That is the first clock. The second is the Transmission System Operator, which the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act assigns responsibility for market operation alongside system and transmission operation. President Ramaphosa endorsed an independent TSO owning the grid outright on 3 August, and creditor negotiations over the asset transfer are only now beginning.
A market needs an operator, and the operator’s ownership is unresolved while the rules governing the market are in their third draft. Neither process can wait for the other, and both are being run by institutions with a live commercial interest in the outcome.
Eskom’s own posture has moved. Group chief executive Dan Marokane has written and spoken about the utility tooling up to compete as a trader in its own right rather than contesting whether the market should exist, which is a more useful position for everyone than the one preceding it. A competitive market with Eskom trading inside it is a workable end state. A market whose rules are litigated after commencement is not.
What the August window is really settling is whether the non-bypassable charge lands somewhere all parties can live with. Set it too high and traders have no margin to compete on. Set it too low and Eskom carries the cost of a network everyone uses. Every other question in the document depends on that one, and the answer determines whether South Africa’s market opens in 2026 or in court.
