Byline: Kelebogile Masemola

15 June 2022

Masses of angry residents in and around Mabopane were up in arms over Eskom’s power cuts around the area since Friday.

Residents of Klipgat, Winterveldt, Mabopane, Slovo and Marikana took their outrage to the streets blocking roads with burning tyres and rocks on Tuesday, 14 June 2022, demanding that Eskom restore power to their townships.

The disconnection affected everyone in the area, it was firstly concluded that it might be load shedding but as days went by the residents understood that it was not load shedding.

Learners missed their exams as they have not been able to travel to school to write their exams since Monday, while other residents were inconvenienced when they had to go to work.

“We are deeply affected by this, our children cannot go to school because there is no electricity and it is winter season.

I have children who are starving, we cannot cook and items in our refrigerators are getting spoilt, Eskom must not play games with us.

We need electricity so our lives can go back to normal,” said Klipgat resident, John Mathebula.

Klipgat resident, Kate Slender said community members went to Eskom offices but they were not assisted.

“Not having electricity attracts crime activities in our area as the police station and the clinic also do not have electricity and are not functioning.

We had numerous meetings with Eskom, we were told that there is no money for repairs for transformers.

Cable theft is a huge problem, we report them and nothing gets resolved but when we fix it ourselves it’s a problem,” said Slender.

Another community member said the most vital thing for them was for power to be restored.

“We want Eskom to come and restore our power, we have been waiting for our ward councillor to update us.

It was said that the ward councillor went to Eskom offices to resolve this, but she has not given us any feedback.

Our ward councilors don’t take us seriously, the two councillors in ward 36 and 37 have electricity but we don’t, yet we are in the same area”.

He stated further that councillors are living a good life and do not care about the community.

“We were told since February that there would be power cuts, but they did not explain to us properly how the power cuts will work”.

The community swore to continue protesting until the issue has been resolved.