Eskom has swung back to profitability for the first time in eight years, posting more than R24 billion in profit for the first six months of the current financial year, Cabinet announced on Wednesday.
Briefing reporters after the final Cabinet meeting of 2025, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the state-owned power utility’s performance vindicated government’s multi-year turnaround strategy.
“Eskom has moved from a struggling entity to a profitable one,” Ntshavheni told journalists in Pretoria. She revealed that profit for the period to September 2025 was 37% higher than the same six months in 2024.
The minister highlighted dramatic improvements in energy availability, with Eskom achieving 96% supply reliability in the 2024/25 financial year and 98% year-to-date in the current year. Only four days of load shedding have been recorded recently.
“Load shedding is now a thing of the past,” Ntshavheni declared.
However, she acknowledged that “load reduction” – deliberate power cuts by municipalities to protect strained local infrastructure in high-density areas – remains a challenge for many communities.
Cabinet attributed the recovery to intensified maintenance, better coal management, debt restructuring and operational reforms introduced since 2019.
The announcement comes as South Africa marks nearly two years since the last prolonged bout of nationwide load shedding, a crisis that had crippled the economy for over a decade.