President Cyril Ramaphosa's surprise call to press pause on Eskom's planned tariff increase raises the question of how he missed the obvious credibility risk, both to himself and the regulator, Nersa, writes Khaya Sithole.
A few days ago, as the country finally discovered what the National Energy Regulator's decision on Eskom's latest application for a tariff update would be, an innocent Twitter user suggested that we shouldn't have a regulator at all for a monopoly like Eskom.
The increase that Eskom applied for – in light of the saga of load shedding and a cost-of-living crisis – was always going to create an uproar. As citizens and businesses have been subjected to the longest continuous bouts of load shedding, what little patience some still had for tolerating Eskom has been completely shed.