Johannesburg - While households and businesses barely survive through incessant rolling power cuts across South Africa, Soweto is slapped with double problems; with load reduction and load shedding at the same time, due to the non-payment of electricity supply by a majority.
Last month, hundreds of people joined Soweto parliament leader Nhlanhla ‘Lux’ Dlamini to protest against Eskom regular blackouts and poor service delivery outside Joburg mayor, Mpho Phalatse’s office after the power utility demanded a R6 500 reconnection fee.
The paying or compliant residents feel hard done by Eskom’s indiscriminate power reductions saying they too are being victimised even though many of them are on prepaid electricity
This has pitted paying neighbours against those who are ‘stealing” electricity.
However, the spokesperson of the power utility, Sikonathi Mantshantsha, said Eskom is unable to keep electricity on for the buyers and leave non-payers in the dark because the utility’s network is configured in such a way that it is not possible to disconnect only those who are not paying.
“Eskom is exploring a viable technical solution that will ensure that buying customers are not impacted by the activities of defaulting customers,” Mantshantsha said.
A leader of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, Trevor Ngwane, has accused Eskom of targeting the poor.
He said while Eskom operated like a business, it also had a social mandate as a state-owned company.
Ngwane said he believed that Eskom was not even sure how much Soweto owed and described the parastatal as merely bullying the poor.
He said in situations where communities were strong and undivided, Eskom was unable to install the pre-paid metres.
“The government of the ANC shifted to an anti-poor economic policy.
“If you are poor, you are a problem to the system because you don’t have the means to afford it.
“Electricity tariffs have increased more than 400% over the past 20 years.
“People are unemployed and those in the townships get poor services.
“Electricity has to be regarded as a basic human right and the basic amount of free electricity needs to be provided to everyone,” said Ngwane.
In Soweto compliant and non-compliant residents find themselves protesting side-by-side when Eskom shuts down electricity for up to two months in other areas where the overloaded system often causes transformers to explode leaving residents in the dark.
An example of an area where one side is paying while another is not but both sides are subjected to load reduction alike is Protea South, Soweto.
According to the residents, Eskom has had a problem with the area’s non-compliance and non-payment for quite some time.
Last December, communication was sent to residents by the power utility informing them that they would cut off the electricity in the area, in due course, if non-payment persisted.
They’ve now been in the dark for two months.
It is said that a transformer in the area that feeds sixteen smaller transformers has been switched off.
Eskom told residents that it would switch the power back on, on condition that 60% of the smaller transformers are paid for by the users because six of the sixteen transformers are used by non-payers.
“We are now in the process of everyone (who has paid towards the transformers) getting a reference number, and hopefully, if the number of payers gets to where Eskom would like we would get our power back. Residents need to figure out the status of their account with Eskom,” said Protea South resident, Salamina Mokgosi.
With some sections of 92 homes currently without power, a meeting was held between the representatives of the community and the councillor in May, 2022.
At that meeting, it was agreed that the representatives would go back to the communities and put together a database of who is able to pay Eskom and who isn’t.
For those who cannot afford to pay for electricity, Eskom said the government of South Africa launched the Free Basic Electricity (FBE) initiative in 2003, with the aim to support qualifying indigent households to meet their basic electricity needs. The FBE is made available to qualifying customers nationwide, including Soweto.
The City of Joburg (CoJ) has an Expanded Social Package (ESP), a process for identifying qualifying customers.
The process to determine indigent customers can only be conducted by the CoJ.
The municipality will then send a list of those customers who qualify for the FBE to Eskom so that the customers can access this benefit.
Customers are encouraged to consult with the CoJ to determine if they qualify for this benefit.
But the residents of Protea South are concerned that the process to compile the ESP recipients may take long, because this is now a separate office and jurisdiction from Eskom.
The utility insists that the City of Joburg needs to look into that.
For now, Protea South remains in the dark until the threshold of 60% paying customers is achieved by the utility.
“Eskom wanted each household to pay R6 052 to have their power restored but we’ve gone back to them saying residents can only afford to pay R500 each.
“We are keeping a database of payments made by households so we can at least reach the threshold Eskom wants.
“At this stage, 40% of the residents have made payments.
‘We are still working on it,” said Mokgosi.
Eskom said it aims to have all its customers pay for the electricity that they use and buy electricity from legal vendors.
In Orlando East, around 36 homes have been in the dark due to non-compliance. A resident who did not want to be named said they have bridged (connected illegally) their electricity because they can’t afford to pay.
“We bridge our electricity because we cannot afford to pay for it. Most of the people who live here are unemployed and don’t have a steady income.
“So what are we expected to do?
“People who live in Orlando East are pensioners or people who’ve inherited homes from their late parents and they depend on a social grant,” he said.