The ‘Rockman’ statue at the entrance to Eskom’s Megawatt Park head office in Johannesburg exemplifies the current difficult reality facing the State-owned utility. While its maintenance efforts are likely to improve the performance of its coal fleet in the short term, a good portion of that fleet is approaching retirement age. In addition, although procurement of private power is resuming, there has been a near seven-year procurement interval. The net effect is that South Africa will have to ‘mind the gap’, currently estimated to be at least 4 GW, for another five years.