From small-time thieves pilfering R20 switches to organised gangs armed with AK-47s, criminals are preying on Johannesburg's electricity infrastructure and police and security guards seem powerless to stop them.
A group of men dressed in municipal uniforms recently hit a spot in Nancefield during afternoon load-shedding, said Michael Sun, metro council member for the environment & infrastructure services.
They dug a trench to access a cluster of underground copper cables, hooked the cables to a bakkie and drove off, pulling 180m of high-voltage cable worth almost R60,000 out of the ground in full view of witnesses who thought they were municipal workers. They are still at large.
Sun said many well-resourced gangs with inside information and heavy fire-power are brazenly looting City Power infrastructure, causing millions of rand in damage and intensifying the already dire impact of load-shedding.
5: average incidences of cable theft daily in Joburg
R800,000: estimated cost to repair a blown substation
R3m: cost to repair and move substation to a secure location
— IN NUMBERS:
City Power security guards are paying a high price themselves. This month two were shot dead in Newtown when they went to fetch a load of burnt copper from an underground fire. The assailants took their guns and copper cables.
Barely a week earlier, a security guard was shot in the head during an attack in Kya Sands. He is still in a serious condition in hospital.
Cable theft can cause frustrated consumers to go for long periods — sometimes days at a time — without power.
Community activist Cheryl Towndrow, who has lived in Fairland since 1988, said on top of load-shedding her block experienced a 35-hour power outage that hit at lunch time last Saturday. Electricity was restored on Family Day.
Marketing professional Marthinus Jansen van Rensburg, who lives in Greenside, said his power was off for five days this week, despite several attempts to repair a failed substation by city technicians. His power was restored only on Friday.
Our electricity went off on Easter Sunday after a power surge, but came on again - only for load-shedding to kick in. And it just never came on again
— Greenside resident Marthinus Jansen van Rensburg
“Our electricity went off on Easter Sunday after a power surge, but came on again — only for load-shedding to kick in. And it just never came on again. Our whole block with about 20 homes was affected, and everyone logged calls. Repeatedly messages came back that it was resolved, but it was not.”
Jansen van Vuuren said he and his partner have a generator because they often work from home.
“This week we spent R1,000 on petrol for the generator. Eventually, you just go through the motions, and create this spiderweb of extension cords through the home to get power in the house. Cold showers in the morning is nothing new.
“We have a gas stove, fortunately, but most nights we just got takeouts. The generator was basically to keep the fridge and freezer going. In our street, we have a gentleman's agreement that people switch off their generators at 9pm, and back on at 7am — just to keep us all sane.”
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena told The Sunday Times there has been a marked increase in unplanned outages and that 248 cable theft incidents had been reported between March 1 and April 19 — an average of five a day across the city.
He said that at 6am on Wednesday City Power had 4,000 registered calls, of which more than half had been waiting more than 24 hours for attention.
“These guys [who attack the substations] are heavily armed. It’s organised crime and it has grown beyond what City Power can handle. We are not law enforcement. The call by the mayor [Mpho Phalatse] for a national intervention is warranted,” Mangena said.
Sun said that in Eldorado Park the fed-up community had created its own teams to patrol cable theft hotspots and they had made 14 arrests in less than 24 hours.
Efforts to address the city's power problems would include training new electrician interns, beefing up security, establishing more community patrol groups and getting police to target those in the scrap metal industry who buy stolen material, he said.
Other efforts to secure cables — such as covering them in concrete or other substances to make them difficult to steal — were being explored, Sun said.
He said repairs to a blown substation can cost about R800,000, or up to R3m in cases where it is completely dismantled and moved to a safer place where it cannot be easily accessed.
Another challenge is a huge increase in exploding substations. Mangena said there have been five cases this year so far, compared with two last year.
Old infrastructure — most of Johannesburg’s substations are more than 50 years old — too-frequent on-off switching, heavy rains, staff shortages and vandalism all contribute to the repeated power outages.
“During load-shedding we are not able to do maintenance. We are forced to divide ourselves between attending to regular outage faults, and attend to load-shedding… and now stage 4 has exacerbated issues as we are still recovering from backlogs caused by the persistent rain,” Mangena said.
Provincial commissioner Lt-Gen Elias Mawela acknowledged Gauteng was experiencing serious challenges with cable theft and damage to essential infrastructure.
“The latest arrests are indicative of our resolve to work tirelessly with our stakeholders to mitigate this challenge,” he said.
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