R100 used to feel like a small but honest rescue, enough to keep the kettle alive, the router blinking, and maybe one more load in the washing machine. Now the same top-up lands with a quiet insult on the receipt: the number on the slip looks familiar, but the units underneath have gone missing.
Anyone staring at a prepaid token in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or an Eskom-direct area reports the same thing: money leaves your wallet quickly, but electricity arrives late and in smaller quantities. The tariff changed, the bill got clever, and the stove now acts like it has a better offer elsewhere.
What changed on the slip
Eskom’s direct customers moved onto higher tariffs in April 2026, with an average increase of about 8.8 percent. Municipal customers followed in July, with average increases around 9 percent. These neat averages for a presentation slide translate into fewer kilowatt-hours for the same R100 on a prepaid slip, which is what households actually feel.
The blow is not always a clean percentage. A prepaid purchase is shaped by the tariff category, the block you are in, the city’s own mark-up, and any fixed charges already waiting to be settled. Two people can both load R100 and get very different results, even if they live a few suburbs apart.
Before the increases, a R100 top-up in an Eskom-direct Homepower 4 area could provide about 45 kWh in March 2026. After April’s adjustment, that same R100 now tends to return about 41 to 42 kWh. Johannesburg’s City Power residential users saw a similar squeeze, with a drop from roughly 42 kWh to about 38 or 39 kWh once the July tariff change kicked in.
Cape Town’s Home User tariff has been even less forgiving because the Home User Charge acts like a small tax on optimism. A R100 top-up that might have bought around 40 kWh before July is now closer to 36 or 37 kWh. In Durban, eThekwini customers who once got about 43 kWh for R100 are now more likely to see 39 or 40 kWh. The note value is the same, but the haul is smaller.
Why R100 buys less
Prepaid electricity is not just electricity. The meter reads one thing, but the system takes its cut first. Fixed service charges, network access fees, and municipal levies can be deducted before the money is turned into units. Then VAT takes its slice, and then the actual energy charge is applied.
This is how a R100 top-up can behave like a much smaller amount. If R15 is swallowed by accumulated service fees, you are already down to R85. Apply VAT, and the energy pot shrinks further before a single unit has been counted. If the tariff in your area sits at a higher block because you have already used more power that month, the units get pricier again.
A spreadsheet might say the increase is about 9 percent, but a kitchen says the stove gave up sooner. A family with school lunches to prepare says the geyser and kettle are starting to look like luxuries with bad timing.
The block system also matters. Most residential tariffs are tiered: the first stretch of usage is cheaper, then the next block gets pricier, then pricier again. This means a late-month R100 top-up can buy less than the same R100 did earlier in the billing cycle. The same money, the same suburb, the same person pressing the same buttons, but a different answer from the meter.
What people are noticing
People do not discuss inclining block tariffs over tea. They talk about the oven cutting out halfway through supper, or the prepaid balance vanishing before payday has even arrived. They compare slips in group chats, which is how South Africans now do policy analysis, one screenshot at a time.
The most common reaction is not abstract outrage, but annoyance with the timing. R100 used to buy a bit of breathing room; now it buys a short appointment with the power supply. In Cape Town, someone notices the Home User Charge has eaten a chunk before the first kettle boil. In Johannesburg, the token seems to disappear faster than the groceries did. In Durban, the family starts rationing cooking time. In an Eskom-direct area, the same top-up that once covered the week is now gone with suspicious speed.
There is also a particular kind of anger that comes from the invisibility of the change. Nothing dramatic happens. The meter does not explode. The lights do not flash a warning. The household simply realises that the old routine no longer fits the same budget.
The bigger squeeze
The real story is not that electricity got more expensive in the abstract; South Africans have heard that tune before. The story is that price increases announced as averages end up landing in the most ordinary place possible: the prepaid slip on a Tuesday.
That slip is where national policy stops being theoretical. It is where municipal mark-ups, Eskom bulk pricing, service fees, VAT, and block tariffs all meet a family trying to get through the month without cooking by candlelight. It is also where the lie of the “average increase” falls apart. Averages do not fry eggs. Units do.
So the next time someone says the tariff went up by about 9 percent, translate it into household language. It means a R100 top-up now behaves like a smaller favour. It means the stove runs out earlier, the lights get managed more carefully, and the first thing to disappear is not the bill. It is the sense that R100 still buys what it used to.
