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The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the announcement today that Eskom may be selling off R 40 billion worth of shares in the new Kusile power station. This is a landmark decision, and is precisely the sort of action that needs to be taken to inject private capital, and the greater efficiencies that go along with that. This announcement is certainly very significant. With the stakes so high, Eskom has been left with little choice but to make an important decision in the best interests of energy security, rather than to satisfy the ANC's ideological position on the role of the private sector in its ‘developmental state'. The outcome is that we now are looking at private involvement in energy generation. This is precisely what the DA has long been calling for, and so the move is certainly most welcome. We have long argued that the natural monopoly of transmission needs to be unbundled from the potentially competitive activity of generation. It is a pity that this move has been brought about via a national emergency rather than as a consequence of government program of action. Though this move does not necessarily signal that independent power producers are being given the room they need to operate in South Africa, it nonetheless implies that there is acknowledgment of the fact that Eskom's monopoly is simply not sustainable. There are sure to be calls against such a move from narrow interests groups, but it is clear that this decision provides Eskom some breathing room for bringing down the tariff hike application to 35%; in other words, electricity tariff increases will be much higher if not for this privatisation. Notably, in response to a parliamentary question posed by the DA, and with additional information released subsequent to the reply, we know that parastatals have received about R 245-billion in financial assistance over the past four years. If serious consideration is paid to partial or full privatisation of some of these entities, enormous volumes of state funds can be saved, and diverted towards the proper delivery of services and infrastructure.