State capacity D3

Can the grid carry an investment boom? D3a

Your words: “electricity availability — public and private”. One chart cannot hold both. Eskom’s EAF is a percentage of Eskom’s own fleet, defined to exclude everyone else’s plant; ownership is only ever published as megawatts generated. So availability sits above the ownership split on a shared axis, each with its own unit, and reading downward is reading the question as you asked it.

▼Bearish 70.19% is Eskom's first figure for the week beginning 26 October, which runs to Sunday 1 November and is not complete. The same file restated the three October weeks before it by a few hundredths: 5 October 69.45 → 69.53%, 12 October 68.83 → 68.91%, and 19 October 65.45 → 65.43%, so the completed sequence now runs 69.60 → 71.47 → 68.92 → 70.78 → 69.53 → 68.91 → 65.43. The 19 October week is 17.20% below the 20 July record of 79.02% and the weakest completed week since the one beginning 8 June, at 64.61%. Bearish holds. The 69% line we set you applies to a completed week, and the two most recent completed weeks are both under it: the 12 October week by nine hundredths of a point after its restatement, and the 19 October week by more than three and a half points. The new week has started above the line, and that is worth watching: the 19 October week's first figure was 60.91% and rose as the week filled in, so first figures have tended to be low, not high. If the 26 October week completes above 69% it will be the first to do so since the week beginning 28 September, and we will re-judge the call then, not before.

The private capacity nobody meters D3a

Not called in this cycle — the chart and the rail carry the numbers; only the judgment is absent.

Can the freight system carry it? D3b

▲Bullish 81.4 mt in the half-year to 30 September 2025, +4.36% on the comparable half of 78.0 mt, and 394 days old. The results index was read again and holds no FY2026 results. The last half-year you hold grew, so bullish stands on the data, as a statement about a period that ended almost a year ago. On the last five years' pattern the annual results are due about now, and when they arrive the rail leg of your state-capacity composite moves for the first time since March.

The composite D3

–Neutral 64.9 at 2026-09-30, quoted from scripts/derived.mjs and unchanged: provisional. Legs at the weights you set of 0.50 / 0.25 / 0.25: electricity 69.7/100 (September's weekly mean 70.19% against August's 69.95%), ports 87.6/100 (460,203 TEUs in September), rail 32.4/100 (81.4 mt, unchanged since the 2025 interim results). Tonight's Eskom restatements touched only October weeks, so September's leg did not move. Neutral holds, unchanged since the 14 October move from bearish. Direction is your rule for this composite, and September is up by more than ten points on August. But nearly all of the rise comes from ports, and most of that is the September peak in container traffic; containers are still five per cent down on a year ago. Electricity, which you told us must dominate, barely moved in September. October's three completed weeks average 67.96%, more than two points below September's 70.19%; the first figure for the fourth week is 70.19%, the same number as September's mean, but that week is not complete. October's leg will not enter the composite until October's ports figure arrives, in mid-November. A seasonal rise in ports with a flat grid is not the improvement your question asks about, so we call it neutral, not bullish.