“Ah but these things always grind to a halt and take a few steps back”. So say many grumpy reform sceptics out there (many of them, amusingly, are former National Treasury).

There is a certain grumpiness seen among many local bank bond traders and a good few local asset managers on both reform and fiscal policy too.

This is not really about the government of national unity falling apart, or global recession risk or geopolitics of whatever else. It’s a deeper and ingrained asymmetry.

A certain caution and scepticism is of course justified. This is the yoke that reformers have to bear now — whether that’s on structural reform or fiscal matters. Things were for far too long two steps forward and one or two (or three) steps backwards.

The problem is this seems deeper and more visceral and stickier in the face of evidence. We must always be cautious of not unduly giving the benefit of the doubt — indeed markets and the private sector gave far too much benefit of the doubt for far too long — to Jacob Zuma and his cronies. However that’s different to a blindness to change.

Perhaps a different way to put it is that caution and scepticism should be constructively channelled into the battle against the forces for status quo that can try to destabilise reform momentum. Such “counter-revolutionary” forces pop up all over the place still.

It is worth reminding readers — indeed is worth the government from the top reminding the SOEs — that change is government’s position and its policy.

A single line caught my eye in the leaked draft tariff application of Eskom — it said that “the Eskom road map is not legislation”. It hinted to a mindset straining in parts of Eskom (but not others) that wants to keep control of its destiny even if management and the board have different views. Indeed the road map is the full policy of the government with which the state is charging forward on.

The same happened last year with Transnet on the freight logistics road map. The presidency level plan, despite passing through cabinet, was positioned as something lesser — not a white paper, a guide and not a straitjacket, almost optional. The National Treasury, importantly, then incorporated it wholesale into its guarantee conditionality on the entity and all this in some sense became moot, but the mindset that still doesn’t believe someone else is telling it what to do is at risk in parts of rearing its head.

It shouldn’t be this way of course — the path forward has come out from the cabinet lekgotla, the opening of parliament address, the ANC lekgotla and new ministers’ statements since the elections.

The recent Eskom objection to the national energy regulator of SA (Nersa) awarding trading licences was more like a cry for help then a genuine objection. There are already traders licences and their grounds — and the subsequent press release — were spuriously argued at best. Nersa in a rare show of “live” fortitude seemed to spit out its proverbial coffee during the public hearings.

It exposed something deeper, however, which has again been reinforced in the past week — that the governance structures need to exert themselves. The Eskom holdco c-suite and board seem behind reform, yet the staff of the holdco (really the still-to-be-unbundled distribution element) objected to the trading licences.

The Eskom holdco and c-suite seem to be broadly in favour of a private sector led transmission project model (so-called independent transmission projects) and so does the National Transmission Company SA (NTCSA) board — yet the NTCSA staff are against it.

What we have is a messy mix then of overlapping governance which is not exerting itself to set the rules of play here, and where it is, it is sometimes conflicting.

Reforms, which push forward clarity of thought and clarity of governance — and then clarity of implementation — are required more than ever.

This is also true at Transnet as sub-cos such as the Infrastructure Manager and Rolling Stock company are meant to be Chinese walled and unbundled. A new Transnet National Ports Authority board is only able so far to exert itself so much.

Messiness and conflicts — that is bad Chinese walling — risks creating uncertainty that will block investment and the solving of the crises of network industries that policy reform is meant to solve — if not nipped in the bud quickly.

We are now more than two months after the elections and still have no clarity on the future of the department of public enterprises except a mix of messy and contradictory statements. A full document is required to provide clarity for creditors and those looking to invest in reformed network industries. It is not clear that either the presidency or line ministries are adequately suited at present to deal with the complexity facing partially reformed SOEs in a transitional phase. One option must be chosen and then doubled down on with capacity and expertise.

The Treasury can only exert so much influence from arms’ length conditionalities — albeit it is probably the key “stick” at the moment. Something softer in terms of shareholder actual ownership direction through shareholder compacts is needed. The failure of the last minister at the public enterprises department was not to recognise and implement the required follow on steps from setting policy such as the Eskom road map to corral in the government and in SOEs to be on the same page. That was the seeds of the problems that now need clearing up.

We have seen in Eskom unbundling the problems that can arise with limited advice to each actor — Lazard acted for Eskom and the Treasury had its own advice from the World Bank. Now we are seeing the NTCSA waking up to the fact it needs its own advice on the unbundling given the process was biased against it as a stand-alone entity through upstream guarantees and a borrowing ban.

All this is (someway to being) solved with choosing a shareholder oversight structure — either in the presidency or in line ministries — and stuffing it with its own expert advice and ensuring that all elements of the system have appropriate and independent advice. Ideas of having restructuring officers are good in theory but failed with the wrong personalities appointed, and provide a cautionary tale.

The SOE Holding Company bill in parliament is a distraction to this process. If the public enterprises department previously struggled to get it right and had distracted leadership the risk of course is that a holdco falls into the same trap. The central point here is to ensure that policy is pushed down after all — to keep entities on the reform path from an oversight and ownership perspective not just by a funder (National Treasury).

There is no time to delay, after all. Delay only reinforces the grumpiness and reform scepticism out there.

• Peter Attard Montalto leads on political economy, markets and the just energy transition at Krutham, a SA research-led consulting company.