Eskom, with its contingent liability of R250-billion, could be the biggest risk to South Africa's economy, says former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene.
The debt didn't keep him awake at night when he was the finance minister because "it was on a sustainable basis. We knew that it would be able to service its debt."
There is no such comfort now, he says.
"With all the things that have been happening at Eskom, I think as a country we should be concerned. We do need to get Eskom's house in order."
Given the size of its exposure to Eskom, the government's response to the crisis there has not filled him with confidence.
"Government has to be firmer on how Eskom manages its affairs. Because of that exposure. You can't have that much exposure and government doesn't agree on what to do."
The options are desperately limited. Going to the bond market is not one of them, he says. "That depends on how creditworthy you are, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done to clean up Eskom's image in terms of its credit rating."
It can't expect much from the government because the government has reached the limit of what it can do in terms of guaranteeing more Eskom loans.
Nene gave Eskom a R23-billion lifeline in 2015 which many considered to be money down the drain. "It should have been accompanied by a number of governance issues," he says.
But it wasn't.
He says that with the right board and executive leadership, Eskom can still be turned around, but he agrees that the signs so far are not promising.
He doesn't understand what the board is up to. "I had thought we sort of now had a board that was on top of things, but it does seem like we're not out of the woods yet."
He finds the sudden appointment of Sean Maritz as the new CEO last week puzzling, and raises his eyebrows at Eskom chairman Zethembe Khoza's explanation that the post is being rotated to give more people a chance to be CEO.
"I don't think we should be focusing on giving everybody a chance, we should be focusing on making sure that the organisation functions properly.
"There must be stability there. As taxpayers and investors, and everybody else, we must be given the comfort that that institution is run properly."
In spite of the worrying signs, he says he remains "a permanent optimist" because he cannot believe "there can be anybody in his right mind who would not have the interests of the country [at heart] and would not want a fully functional Eskom".
Turning to Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba's medium-term budget policy statement on October 25, Nene said he was quaking in his boots when he had to deliver his own medium-term budget policy statement in 2014 and 2015 because the economic situation at the time was so dire.
It is a lot worse now, he says.
"It is much more difficult terrain now. He [Gigaba] is faced with much tougher challenges."
Fiscal consolidation was his biggest challenge. Containing government expenditure is Gigaba's biggest challenge now.
"I just hope government is able to stick to its expenditure ceiling. A revision in the ceiling would be a tragedy."
But Gigaba is between "a rock and a very hard place", he says. Expenditure cuts could lead to a deterioration of the situation if they are not in the right places.
Tax hikes would risk slowing South Africa's moribund economic growth even more.
He says implementing the National Health Insurance scheme would not be feasible without adequate resources and a proper funding model in place, and he sees no evidence of this.
The biggest government expenditure is the public wage bill, but cutting it is something "we have all tried our hand at with very little success", he says. "What we have seen is a rising wage bill without the commensurate rise in productivity."
He views the forthcoming public wage negotiations with concern.
If the government does not control public sector expenditure it will trigger a downgrade of the local currency debt to junk status, he says.
Nene has supported Gigaba's bailouts of SAA but says a turnaround of the national carrier is now critical. It has been bankrupted by decisions taken under the leadership of chairman Dudu Myeni, who remains in charge even though her contract has expired.
Nene was fired as finance minister in December 2015 after forcing Myeni, a close friend of President Jacob Zuma's, to reverse a shady transaction she had pushed through with the help of a pliant board.
He won't say if he thinks a turnaround is likely while she is there, but describes Gigaba's extension of her term as "a very strange turn of events".
He says Gigaba will not be able to strong-arm the Public Investment Corporation into funding SAA without a mandate from its biggest client, the Government Employees Pension Fund.
"It is important that the GEPF stands its ground," says Nene, who chaired the PIC when he was deputy finance minister.
He does not believe the National Treasury would be able to raid private sector pension funds even if it wanted to.
All stakeholders would have to be consulted before the government could designate them as prescribed assets, he says.
"This is not something that could be done outside of the pension funds themselves. They have a fiduciary duty on behalf of their members to protect their funds."
The apartheid government passed legislation forcing private pension funds to invest in government assets. Couldn't this government do the same?
"I don't think so. We live in a constitutional democracy these days."
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