Cape Town - Violent protests protests flared up in Macassar over the ongoing power outages which had plunged the area into darkness in recent weeks.
A group of residents in Firgrove took to the streets on Sunday and Monday and barricaded them. However, on Monday evening the protests turned violent and some residents burnt tyres and blocked the streets.
While no damage to infrastructure was reported, ward councillor Peter Helfrich, who condemned the violent protests, said these actions by the frustrated community were expected as residents had become impatient with Eskom.
Eskom attributed these numerous unplanned power cuts to a surge in theft and vandalism of equipment in recent months in Macassar.
It said the problem was persisting and that it had been engaging law-enforcement and lobbying the support of the community to find solutions to protect its network.
However, Helfrich said the primary reason for the extended power outages was not load shedding, vandalism, or cable theft, but the failing electricity infrastructure of Eskom. Helfrich said there seemed to be difficulties sourcing critical material to replace or repair infrastructure when it failed.
He said Eskom seemed to be struggling with resources as it takes extended periods of time to find faults when its infrastructure fails.
Helfrich said residents had been requesting Eskom for years to replace its aged “medium voltage power line” supplying Macassar with electricity.
He said residents had also asked the power utility to install a second medium voltage power line (“ring feed”), which would allow Eskom to switch over to an alternative supply of power when its infrastructure failed.
“That cable, according to the community, is between 45 and 52 years old. It’s a 3.2km cable that has to be replaced. If you take into account all the repairs that Eskom has done over the last 10 years, the community says that they could have replaced that cable many times over,” he said.
Helfrich said he had continuously engaged Eskom even though this was not a City matter, including last month when various promises were made to assess the cable and plan to replace it. However, he said the power utility failed to deliver on these promises.
Helfrich said when these protests flared up, further correspondence was sent to Eskom and instead, the power utility would delegate lower-level management (to) meetings which he said had no capacity to decide on the cable replacement.
Eskom said its senior management met the Macassar community leaders on Monday to discuss the ongoing electricity supply outages.
The power utility said it had been regularly engaging the community leaders and stakeholders to discuss possible solutions to protect infrastructure so that customers can experience a stable electricity supply.
It said another engagement would follow where it would share possible solutions to address electricity supply issues.