Former Vodacom and Cell C boss selected to lead Eskom distribution

South Africa’s state utility, Eskom, has made an external executive appointment, poaching Vodacom and Cell C alumnus Junaid Munshi to navigate the country’s increasingly competitive energy sector.

The utility announced that Munshi has been appointed as the new group executive for its Distribution division, effective 1 June 2026. He steps into a role left vacant by Monde Bala, who was permanently appointed as CEO of the newly formed National Transmission Company South Africa (NTCSA).

Munshi is a seasoned electronic engineer and commercial executive with more than three decades of leadership experience in the technology and telecommunications sectors across South Africa and multiple African markets.

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Before his most recent role as chief commercial officer at Cable & Wireless Seychelles, he held senior executive positions within major telecommunications organisations, including Vodacom Group, Cell C, and Maziv Group.

Competing beyond the monopoly

The restructuring comes at a critical operational juncture for the power utility. Having recently surpassed a full year without rotational load shedding, Eskom is fast-tracking structural reforms to defend its traditional consumer base against private-sector generation alternatives.

Eskom Group CEO Dan Marokane emphasised that a stable grid requires a total overhaul of how the utility interacts with the marketplace: “The decisive turning point of one year without load shedding that we reached earlier this month marks a structural shift from a recovering grid to a stable, high-performing power system that advances the economy, competition and the integration of renewable energy.”

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“In the reformed, liberalised marketplace, we recognise we are no longer a monopoly and need to compete to retain and expand our customer base, and we are making the necessary investments to empower our distribution division teams to do so.”

To accelerate this commercial defence strategy, Eskom is deliberately leaning on cross-industry talent infusion rather than relying solely on internal pipelines. Marokane noted that the utility’s operational stabilisation has radically improved its corporate reputation among highly skilled external professionals.

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