Durban - On Thursday, 23-year-old Mthobisi Mokoena was electrocuted in the Swapo informal settlement in Copesville, Pietermaritzburg, when he stepped on an illegal connection.
On Wednesday, 5-year-old Nontobeko Mjoli died in a similar fashion in the Jika Joe settlement, also in the capital city.
Last Monday, a woman from iNtshawini near KwaDukuza died while fetching water.
Mntu Ntuli, 37, had grabbed a live wire to lift it above the bucket balanced on her head.
The man alleged to have made the illegal connection in iNtshawini is on the run after neighbours torched his house.
MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, issued a strongly-worded statement after the first of the three incidents, denouncing illegal connections and saying people who made them were putting their communities at risk and adding to the strain on the national electricity grid.
Durban mayor, James Nxumalo, recently said the pirate electricians who made the connections and their shack-dwelling clients had an inflated sense of entitlement.
KwaDukuza municipality, in a statement immediately after Ntuli’s death, joined what has become a national chorus against the izinyoka-nyoka (snakes), who illegally redirect electricity from power lines to shacks, often leaving dangerous live wires snaking across pathways.
“Such behaviour is unacceptable and the KwaDukuza Municipality deplores and condemns it. The loss of one life is one too many,” said municipal spokesman, Sphelelo Ngobese.
In 1992 only about 3 million households nationally had access to the electricity grid.
But things have improved dramatically since then.
According to Statistics South Africa, 85.3 percent of households, 12.4 million, were connected to the electricity grid in 2012, up from 77.1 percent in 2002.
In KwaZulu-Natal there have also been great strides.
In 2012, 79.3 percent of households in the province were connected to the electricity grid, up from 68.9 percent in 2002.
The figures present a picture of things changing for the better.
Many more homes now have electricity, but StatsSA also noted that not all households connected to electricity were able to afford it and said that 578 005 households nationally accessed electricity informally or illegally.
Apart from the cost in human lives, illegal connections place a considerable burden on taxpayers and the economy.
Illegal electricity connections cost the eThekwini Municipality R230m a year, according to figures supplied by the city.
According to an auditor-general’s report the uMsunduzi municipality lost R90m due to illegal connections in 2012/2013. The cost of removing illegal connections and the lost power accounted for much of this.
Managing Director of the SA Independent Power Producers, Doug Kuni, said illegal connections were costing the country billions. He doubted the problem could be resolved.
Kuni said: “People who are not paying push the cost to those who are paying.”
He said this was part of the reason for the hikes in the price of electricity.
The strain on the national grid caused by power theft is one of the reasons cited for Eskom’s load shedding.
These, in turn have drained as much as R300 billion from the economy since 2008, according to Dawie Roodt, director and chief economist at The Efficient Group, quoted in November.
At a more local level, the inconvenience suffered by law-abiding citizens because of power theft is well documented.
Dennis Pillay, of Clare Estate, Durban, said sub-stations in his area sometimes blew up because of the strain placed on them by illegal connections, leaving the area without power for many hours.
He said they often experienced power surges which sometimes damaged appliances.
“You can be on your computer and suddenly it goes off,” he said.
Pillay said there were people in his neighbourhood who used nebulisers to help them breathe and they struggled when the electricity went off.
“I am not sure if there is going to be a solution to the problem,” he said, noting that some of the neighbouring informal settlements had been electrified, but people continued to steal power.
“People carry on stealing because it is cheaper,” he said.
Activist and executive director of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, Desmond D’Sa, said the high price of electricity was fuelling the trade in illegal connections.
“South Africa has one of the highest electricity rates in the world for residential people,” D’sa said.
This is borne out by the finding of the Electricity and Natural Gas Report and Price Survey for 2013/2014.
The survey by NUS Consulting Group, a consultancy specialising in energy management, found that of the 18 countries covered, South Africa’s 7.5 percent hike during the period was the highest, with the US second at 7.1 percent.
Satish Dhupilia, spokesman for the Sydenham Police Forum, which represents many homeowners bearing the brunt of illegal connections, said: “It is unfair for people to get free electricity when other people are paying for it.”
He said the problems faced by people living in informal settlements had been largely ignored by government.
“They might be invisible to the government but they are not invisible to the people living in the area,” Dhupilia said.
He said the people from the police forum had embarked on programmes to try to help people from the local informal settlements.
Dhupilia said if the problems in the informal settlements were resolved this would have a positive impact on residents in the area.
Abahlali Basemjondolo spokesman, Thembani Ngongoma, said there was a difference between people who illegally connected electricity because they had no access, and those who connected illegally even though they had access to electricity.
He said the organisation condemned people who made the connections despite them having access to electricity and said their actions were “criminal”. He said the problem would be resolved if the eThekwini municipality put more resources into the informal settlements to improve their living conditions.
D’sa said the issue of illegal connections could be resolved if the government rolled out renewable energy such as solar energy. This would take people off the grid and they could “study and do other things”.
In a statement on Friday, eThekwini communications head, Tozi Mthethwa, admitted that illegal electricity connections were an “ongoing challenge” and the municipality and police would not be able to deal with the problem by themselves and needed the community’s help.
She said the municipality had deployed security guards to areas with a high rate of theft, but this was discontinued after a security guard was shot dead.
Mthethwa said measures the municipality was now carrying out to reduce power theft included replacing short electricity transmission poles with longer ones to make it harder for the izinyoka-nyoka.
The uMsunduzi municipality implemented plans to electrify informal settlements last year and allocated R22.3m to this end, with the first project being implemented in June at the Ezinketheni informal settlement in Copesville.
Despite this, electricity theft continues in the informal settlements.
Programmes were also being run to make people aware of the danger of illegal electricity connections.
But while activists ponder what can be done and authorities battle for some kind of solution, the snake’s bite has left its mark on the Ntuli family.
Ntuli’s aunt hopes that the authorities will arrest the man who strung up the illegal connection that killed her niece.
“He has killed my child,” she said.
Daily News