Who are they? The prince of darkness himself and his cronies: the CEO of Eskom and his bumbling buddies. Yes, Eskom is looking for a 9.58% price adjustment for electricity in addition to the already announced 12.69% imposed in the 2015-16 financial year.

The City of Cape Town’s mayoral committee heard that the city had this week received a letter from Eskom “with respect of their reopening of the MYPD 3 (multi-year price) determination in an application to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa”.

If this is allowed to go ahead, it would result in a 22.27% increase in bulk electricity tariffs in one financial year. Who will pay? You, the end user – off course.

News24 quotes Cape Town’s marketing department who said the city was “very concerned” that this application had come so late in the process for the drafting of budgets by municipalities. “Our draft budget to be tabled next week, including the city’s electricity tariffs, is based on the approved 12.69% increase. The size of the proposed increase may be unaffordable to many of our electricity customers, particularly the residential users,” the city said.

“We apologise to our customers in advance that we will have to proceed with a budget announcement on electricity tariffs that will likely increase even more than tabled, but this is not of our own making.”