Another boo-boo with electricity tariffs

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Resellers weigh legal costs against the prospect of effective relief.

This comes against the backdrop of a case currently before the High Court in Pretoria, where Judge RG Tolmay has asked legal teams to formulate a remedy to prevent a “flood of [court] applications” over unlawful tariffs set by Nersa.

In the case before Tolmay, Nersa has conceded that the tariffs it set for the City of Johannesburg, City of Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay, Madibeng and Emfuleni for 2025/26 were unlawful.

Many of the same applicants previously had the tariffs approved by Nersa for Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Madibeng and Msunduzi for 2023/24 declared invalid and set aside.

The court remitted the tariff determinations to Nersa, but the regulator has failed to redetermine them.

Tolmay also presided over last year’s case in which Erasa successfully challenged Ekurhuleni’s electricity reseller tariff for 2025/26, which was declared constitutionally invalid and set aside.

Erasa’s current issue is that when Nersa set the reseller tariffs for 2026/27 in July, it repeated the same mistakes that the court ruled on last year.

This reinforces the pattern Tolmay has identified and hopes to address decisively: Nersa acts unlawfully when determining tariffs, aggrieved parties approach the courts, the courts rule against Nersa, but the regulator fails to comply with the orders.

“The lawyers make money and the taxpayers pay for it. Every few weeks there is another court application. The legal position is clear, but how does that help anyone?” she asked the legal teams on Monday, 9 November.

Electricity resellers buy electricity in bulk and supply it to individual units, mainly in sectional title complexes – be it residential, commercial or industrial.

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