South Africans breathed a collective sigh of relief last month when the National Energy Regulator of South Africa limited Eskom’s 2018/19 tariff increase to 5.23% – the utility was seeking 19.9%. However, given the electricity producer’s perilous financial state (and the likely resistance of bondholders to fund a business with such glaring governance failings), the problem may well have simply been shifted from the consumer to the taxpayer. To avoid catastrophic fiscal fallout, government may well be forced to succumb to radical restructuring.