The robbers struck at 7.30pm, just as Mamosi Molusi was unlocking her front door. Two men grabbed her by her braids, throwing her to the ground.
One pointed a gun at her while two accomplices hid in the darkness, keeping watch.
“They took my phone, my jacket, my shoes and the R300 my employer had just given me,” Molusi says, looking terrified, as she recalls the 2010 robbery. “It was so scary.”
For the 43-year-old domestic worker, who lives in a huddle of shacks deep within Diepsloot Ext 12, three similar robberies would follow - each as she made her way home from work after nightfall.
“There’s no electricity in Ext 12 at all,” she says, surveying the bleak informal settlement. “It’s so dark and easy for criminals to hide.”
Darkness breeds crime, explains Nhlanhla Sibisi, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, especially in areas like Diepsloot, “fraught with abject poverty, lack of electricity and water”.
In Diepsloot, which has “built its reputation on crime”, robbery is most common, with “every door flimsy and each pathway a peril”. In Ext 12, its inhabitants live off the grid, deprived of street and home lighting, he says.
“The murky streets deny residents a sense of safety during the dark hours of the night, and leave them with a strong sense of deprivation and insecurity.”
For Sibisi, Greenpeace Africa’s Project Sunshine is slowly helping to “turn things around”.
Last month, with the Philile Foundation, it installed 12 gleaming rooftop solar panels in four classrooms and a kitchen, at the Diepsloot Philile crèche, which is supported by the foundation.
It has also put in an anaerobic bio-digester to prepare warm meals for the children.
This month, Greenpeace Africa plans to put up eight solar street lights - it is raising R100 000 in a crowdfunding campaign - around the crèche to keep it safe and help illuminate the community.
But Greenpeace Africa had bigger plans to keep Diepsloot’s residents safe. Its senior climate and energy campaign manager, Melita Steele, explains how it started trying to go ahead with a project in 2014 to install 50 solar street lights in four “crime hotspots” in Diepsloot. These were proposed by community members as the areas most in need of lighting and not part of electrification plans for the next decade.
“We finally had to downscale the project to at least be able to deliver something. From Greenpeace Africa’s perspective, it seems like City Power have actively blocked this project from going ahead, with numerous excuses and delay tactics,” she says.
“With no plans to electrify Diepsloot for years to come, innovative solutions like solar street lights should be the way of the future, and Greenpeace believes that this is a solution that could and should be replicated by municipalities across the country,” Steele says.
For school principal Violet Nzimande, where there’s light, there’s still hope. “There was no light in any of our classrooms before this project,” she says, beaming. “This has made a great difference - during winter we’re going to have heaters for children.
“They’re going to see what’s in their books. Before, it was too dark to see anything. They can watch TV now, and listen to the radio.”
As the last glow of fading sunlight falls over Diepsloot, Priscilla Moloinyane enters her dark shack, navigating it with precision.
“Where’s my matches,” she mutters, as she scratches around her impeccably neat cupboards.
She lights two paraffin candles that illuminate a makeshift corrugated iron roof, covered with newspapers to insulate it. “I’ve lived like this since 2007, with no electricity. It’s so cold and it’s not safe,” she says.
“At night you hear people scream but you are too scared to go outside. You can’t leave your house after 6pm, especially in winter.”
Yachika Reddy, of Sustainable Energy Africa, says ever-expanding informal settlements on the edges of cities, like Diepsloot, feel the brunt of energy poverty in South Africa.
Her research, with colleagues, has shown how the government has made enormous inroads into dealing with the challenges of urban poverty, poor households continue to struggle to fulfil basic needs.
Economic benefits from energy access include maternal and child health, education and opportunities for economic development.
“Increasingly, we’re finding that while it takes millions for metros to set down electricity in informal settlements, the take-up in these poor communities is low because most people can’t afford to use electricity for cooking, lighting and heating. So for three-quarters of the month, they go back to unsafe methods such as paraffin and candles.
“We’re saying let’s provide a portfolio of energy sources to informal communities, including renewable energy.”
Nico de Jager, the City of Joburg’s MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, says it has allocated R162.7 million to provide electricity and water connections to poor residents in informal settlements in this financial year.
For Sibisi and Greenpeace Africa, Project Sunshine has “the potential for replication”, proving it’s possible to bring sustainable energy to off-grid communities sooner.
“We chose an area with no power because when it comes to renewables, you don’t have to wait for the grid to come to you The short time it takes for renewable energy to be set up compared to coal power and nuclear power, which takes a hell of a long time.
“In one week, our whole installation was finished. The following week we put the lights on at the crèche.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is to bring hope to communities like these and to tell them, ‘if we can do this, with your participation, imagine how much more the government can do’.
“It’s not our intention as an NGO to embarrass the government - it’s to support their efforts.”
@Sheree_Bega