Eskom generates about 90% of the country’s electricity, mainly through burning coal that it buys from South Africa’s coal mines.

Eskom spends R70-billion a year on coal and its transport alone but until now, its contracts with the mines have been kept hidden.

The case began in 2024, when South Africa’s High Court ordered Eskom to disclose all its coal and diesel contracts. This didn’t happen because Eskom appealed the ruling.

But on 23 March 2026, the Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, saying that vague claims of commercial secrecy are not enough when the public asks how the power utility spends public money, and that Eskom would have to make all active coal and diesel contracts public.

This new ruling could become one of the most important electricity transparency decisions in years. Although the case was brought by AfriForum, a pressure group that works to advance the rights of Afrikaners, the ruling is important for society as a whole.

South Africa has an access to information law that gives people a right to apply for and receive state records. Eskom is state-owned. It is worth mentioning that over the past 20 years, the South African government guaranteed about R350-billion of Eskom’s debt, and eventually took over R230-billion of the utility’s debt. When billions in public money is spent, secrecy becomes hard ethically and legally to defend.

I research electricity governance, administrative law, constitutional accountability and the right to electricity. South Africa has an electricity crisis marked by supply shortages, rising costs, weak public trust and persistent concerns about how decisions are made.

Resolving the electricity crisis is more than about supply. It is also about transparency, trust and fair decision-making. This recent judgment strengthens that same idea.

Why Eskom lost the court case

The judges pointed out that coal and diesel prices are already widely known. They also emphasised that Eskom buys these fuels through open, competitive tender processes. Once a contract is awarded through an open tender process, it becomes much harder to say the price and terms are still genuinely secret.

The court also rejected the idea that disclosure would damage Eskom’s future bargaining position or make collusion more likely. Eskom’s argument was essentially that if suppliers knew what had been agreed in existing contracts, this could affect future negotiations or encourage coordinated conduct in future tenders.

However, Eskom did not show this with concrete facts. It mostly offered broad warnings.

That was not enough for the court. This part of the ruling matters because it confirms the basic principle that when a public body holds information, openness is mandatory by default. Secrecy is the exception, and it must be justified.

Why the ruling matters beyond this case

The ruling means it will become more difficult for Eskom – and perhaps other organs of state – to hide important public-interest documents behind vague claims of commercial harm. This matters in a country where trust in electricity governance is already low. Eskom has been shadowed by years of financial trouble and very serious corruption allegations. In this context, public scrutiny is not a luxury. It is part of accountability.

I’ve written before about how, in late October 2025, the court ruled that the process used by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) to decide yearly electricity price hikes was unconstitutional because it stifled public participation and violated the right to fair administrative action.

The problem the court found was that the cost of supplying electricity, which price hikes are based on, was hidden from the public. The energy regulator is also supposed to calculate price hikes in a way that allows public input. Secrecy means that people affected by high electricity prices didn’t get a chance to state their views.

In the latest case, the issue is fuel contracts. Different documents, same principle: when the public cannot see the records behind electricity decisions, it cannot properly test whether those decisions are lawful, fair or sensible.

The latest judgment also speaks to the wider move of South Africans away from the grid. More households and businesses are looking for solar and battery options because the formal system is unreliable and costly.

But going off-grid is not a solution for everyone. Most South Africans still depend on Eskom and municipalities. Eskom distributes electricity directly to many homes, businesses and other users, while municipalities purchase bulk electricity from Eskom and then resell it within their own areas. That makes transparency in the main system even more important.

What the judgment changes, and what it does not

The court did not say every Eskom document must always be released to the public. There will still be cases where confidentiality is justified. But it did say that a public body cannot just use the words “commercial sensitivity” and end the conversation. It must show, with real facts, why disclosure would cause them economic harm.

The judges also did not need to rely on the law’s public-interest safety valve. Put simply, that is a rule that can require a record to be disclosed if the public interest in seeing the record is strong enough, even where there may be other legal reasons to keep it secret. Eskom had already failed at the earlier step of showing that the contracts deserved to stay secret. That makes the ruling stronger. It means the court treated openness as the ordinary rule, not a special favour.

South Africans have a constitutional right to electricity. It’s closely tied to dignity, housing, water, health and basic economic life. If it is that important, then the public has a strong claim to know how the utility responsible for it spends public money.

For that reason, this is not just a win in one court case. It is a reminder that in a constitutional democracy, the public should not be asked to pay for an electricity system it cannot properly scrutinise.

Written by Felix Dube, Lecturer in the Department of Public Law, University of Venda

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.