There will be no honeymoon period for Eskom’s new CEO, Andre de Ruyter. South Africans are beyond frustrated at the poor performance of the State-owned power utility and irritated by the prospect of not only having their taxes used to bail out the entity but also having such injections accompanied by yet more aggressive tariff hikes. Besides dealing with ongoing public hostility, De Ruyter will also have to come up with a plan to address ongoing operational frailties, a debt burden that is considered unsustainable, a coal fleet that is chronically in breach of pollution limits and a far-reaching restructuring of the enterprise without triggering retrenchments. It’s a workload that simply cannot be shed!