At the beginning of 2008, South Africa faced its most severe electricity supply crisis to date. The crisis led to a severe contraction of mining industry output and had a knock on effect on the rest of the economy. This dissertation aimed to explore how such a crisis could occur in a South Africa, when in the years leading up to the crisis, the state owned electricity utility, Eskom, had won awards as one of the lowest cost, most efficient and technologically innovative electricity companies internationally. In order to explore this, the method of the analytic narrative was used, this was supported by process tracing that identified the key period of research as the years 1998- 2004. The paper explored themes of administrative complexity, competing stakeholders and multiple objectives. It was found that the crisis could be credibly explained as having stemmed from the interaction of complex power relations across the public service in a climate of unresolved political conflict and time sensitive decision making.