Commission for Conciliation

Eskom’s senior managers – who earn R1.5m to R3m a year – are taking the power utility to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) because they have not been given a salary increase in the past year.

Rapport newspaper said on Sunday that between 180 and 200 senior managers wanted a retroactive increase of 4,7% – the same as that granted to middle managers.

Deon Reyneke, deputy director of trade union Solidarity, said should senior management’s demand be implemented, it would cost the power utility an additional R200m to R300m per year.

Eskom just posted a whopping R20.7bn loss in the year to end March and is being kept afloat, in the short term, by massive government bailouts.

The latest bailout – R59bn – announced by finance minister Tito Mboweni in July, would buy the power utility another 12 to 18 months to formulate a recovery plan, Business Times reported on Sunday. This is on top of
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I’ve decided to retain this article on Editor’s Choice as it has provoked a huge response and brings into sharp focus the sort of dire consequences of the ANC’s carelessness over expropriation without compensation.

This may be considered as an ‘unintended’ consequence of the ANC’s ‘land reform process’. The IRR has argued repeatedly since the start of the process that this is the sort of dire situation that can spiral out of control. This is the most high profile thus far, most of the previous acts being against black farmers.

‘It’s mayhem here.’

These are the words of Mrs Luan Anderson, whose family has worked the Emerald Dale Farm in the Donnybrook area of KwaZulu-Natal for the past century. Within the confines of a tough, unforgiving farming economy, it’s a large, value-adding operation – a plantation, a dairy and a sawmill – providing work to some 350 people (some
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