Category Archives: electricity

Armed de-electrification in Pietermaritzburg

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http://witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=84299″

Blitz against hot-wiring sparks violent demo
12 Jul 2012
Thamsanqa Magubane and Chris Ndaliso

PARTS of Northdale turned into a war zone last night as residents of the Nhlalakahle informal settlement retaliated against the disconnection of their illegal electricity earlier in the day.

They barricaded Bombay Road with burning tyres and stoned passing vehicles.
By 7pm last night, the intersection between Bombay Road and Balhambra Way was in flames.

Protesters moved through the dark as plumes of smoke from the burning tyres created a barrier between them and the police and fire-fighters on either side of the road.

At the time of going to press the situation remained unchanged, with police unable to enter the settlement to try to contain the situation.

Angry protesters threw rocks and bottles at passing cars and whoever dared to come near the burning tyres.

Cars driving down Balhambra Way to join Bombay Road had to make a mad dash past the stone-throwing protesters.

One motorist had his back window shattered.

He parked on the side of the road to make an inspection of the damage.

“I don’t know what I have done to these people. It’s going to be a battle for me to sign affidavits and filing for insurance claim to fix this mess.

“You could swear that what they are fighting for is legitimate, but they are in the wrong,” said the motorist, who asked not to be named.

Fire-fighters and police officers stood at a cautious distance lest the protesters stoned them.

A senior fireman, who identified himself as J.S. Marais, remarked that if the protesters could shoot, no one would know who had fired the shots.

Marais had barely spoken when a brick from the other side of the settlement landed between the bystanders and the police, sending everyone scurrying back.

“I can’t send my guys there … For us to get the fire out, it must be safe there,” he said pointing to the blocked road.

The drama started after officials from the Msunduzi Municipality’s disconnection unit, accompanied by police, raided Nhlalakahle to remove all illegal electricity connections.

Members of the team, who declined to be named as they are not allowed to speak to the media, said they collected about a ton of wires.

“There must have been 150 houses in this area,” said a municipal worker. “We had to go house by house to remove all these illegal connections.”

The residents began protesting at about 5pm yesterday.

The worker added: “They first burnt the tyres from the top of the settlement and then rolled them down to the road.

“One of the tyres almost burned one of their houses.”

A municipal team member said the residents in the settlement had been stealing electricity for the past two years.

“They steal electricity from the street lights and this leads to overheating of transformers and power outages,” he said.

Ward councillor Rooksana Ahmed said attempts were being made to resolve the situation.

Msunduzi municipal spokesperson Brian Zuma could not be reached for comment.

Police said they would only be able to comment today.

http://witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=84340

‘We’ll cut down lights …’
13 Jul 2012
Lunga Biyela

A RESIDENT of the Nhlalakahle informal settlement in Northdale, who was in the midst of Wednesday evening’s violent demonstration, warned yesterday that the community would cause more chaos unless it was given electricity.

“We still have plenty of tyres. There are tyres everywhere. We will cut down all of these street lights,” said Sibusiso Sibiya (23), warning of more violent protests.

“We want electricity and water. That is all that we want. We are not fighting with anyone,” said Sibiya.

Sibiya, who said he was part of the crowd that burnt tyres and stoned police vehicles, admitted he was one of the residents who were responsible for the illegal connections.

The protest erupted after Msunduzi Municipality sent in a team to disconnect hot-wired cables in the settlement.

“They [the municipality] don’t want to give us electricity, so we will get it ourselves. We voted for them, but they don’t want to help us. If they can give us water and electricity, we won’t fight with them,” he said.

During Wednesday’s protest, teargas canisters were fired into the informal settlement as residents created a barrier with burning tyres to keep police and fire-fighters on the other side of Bombay Road.

Sibiya complained about the teargas, saying that young children, who were not involved, had been affected.

“They didn’t think about them. There are sick children here now who are coughing because of the teargas.

“We are discriminated against because we live in squatter camps and because we are poor,” he said.

“We did nothing wrong. All we did was steal electricity.”

Whenever there were power cuts, he warned, the residents would connect their homes to powerlines.

A resident in Bombay Road across the informal settlement told The Witness anonymously: “We live in fear. Nobody could come out of their house because they were all afraid of what was going on. The neighbours even had their car [which was parked outside] vandalised.”

The riots started after the municipality had gone to the area to remove illegal cables and connections.

A spokesperson for the municipality, Nqobile Madonda, said a municipal team was sent in because “paying customers’ electricity supply in the surrounding area was being continuously compromised by illegal connections”.

She said the connections were overloading the electricity network and destabilising the supply, which resulted in the municipality losing about R30 000 a month.

Police have yet to make an arrest after the violent protest.

Police spokesperson Captain Thulani Zwane warned that “the police will use all available resources to deal with unruly behaviour by members of the public”.
Zwane said Wednesday night’s protesters were “playing a cat-and-mouse game with the police in that they quickly disappeared between the bushes and the mountain terrain”.

“To pursue the protesters under these circumstances would have been suicidal for the police and would have unnecessarily endangered the lives of innocent bystanders,” said Zwane.

It was therefore difficult to identify perpetrators, he said.

When The Witness visited the scene yesterday, there were no police in sight.

http://witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=84428

Jika Joe: War on power theft goes on
14 Jul 2012
Lunga Biyela

THE Msunduzi Municipality removed more illegal electricity connections yesterday, this time in the Jika Joe informal settlement.

This follows Wednesday’s removal of illegal connections in the Nhlalakahle informal settlement that led to a violent protest when angry residents burnt tyres and stoned passing cars at the intersection of Bombay Road and Balhambra Way.

Dramatic scenes ensued yesterday as municipal workers accompanied by heavily armed guards pulled out cables — some of them buried underground — around shacks in Jika Joe.

Municipality spokesperson Nqobile Madondo said there would be ongoing raids to remove illegal connections so that paying customers’ services were not interrupted.

Residents of Jika Joe complained that they would not be able to keep themselves warm.

“We will not be able to put on heaters,” said Mbonga Mbhele (33) who was speaking on behalf of his neighbours.

Jika Joe residents also raised the problem of having only one tap to serve scores of households, and said toilets were in a bad condition.

Their complaints were similar to those voiced by residents in Nhlalakahle.

On Thursday large parts of neighbouring Northdale were left in darkness after several power poles were toppled. Outraged residents in Northdale want the municipality to act against the people who hook up electricity cables illegally in Nhlalakahle.

“The residents here have been patient, and they understand the plight of those living in the informal settlement,” said Pastor Adiel Chetty of the Entabeni Community Church.

“People will be protesting to have Nhlalakahle removed. It is the only way forward,” said Chetty.

“As residents, we don’t know how to approach this issue. This is an issue between Nhlalakahle and municipality. We are caught in the middle of that war,” he said.

Madondo said illegal connections were “very costly” for the municipality to tackle.

“They compromise on the infrastructure that we have and are very unfair to legal paying citizens as they disrupt their services as well,” she said yesterday. “We will continue to disconnect all illegal electrical connections within Msunduzi Municipality.”

The SA Police Service and municipal security are always on hand to assist in case of unrest,” she said.

Police spokesperson Captain Thulani Zwane said police were still patrolling the areas that were affected by the protests.

“Crime Intelligence members are busy trying to identify the perpetrators. A case of public violence was opened for further investigation. We appeal to the members of the community to assist in identifying these perpetrators,” said Zwane.

Witness: “We remove about a ton of illegal wires a week”

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The constant removal of self-organised electricity connections, which are immediately replaced, reduces people’s ability to make these connections safely. Elites need to be educated on the dangers of not providing electricity to all, which include regular deaths in shack fires, and the futility of using armed force to prevent people from connecting themselves.

http://www.mywitness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=75644

Illegal connection kills man

Siyethemba Gcumisa

A MAN was electrocuted and died early yesterday morning while making an illegal electrical connection in Northdale.

Sibusiso Ndlovu (23) appears to have slipped on wet grass while carrying a live wire from a central distributor unit at the end of Darjeeling Drive, said Msunduzi electricity inspector Mervyn Patrick.

“He was going to attach it to a long piece of bare wire that came from an informal settlement and crossed the Greytown road,” said Patrick.

Ndlovu’s companion fled the scene.

Patrick said residents of nearby houses heard a scream outside.

Later, in Park View informal settlement in Raisethorpe, Ndlovu’s brother, Siyabonga Chonco, heard a voice outside the home that he shared with Ndlovu, shouting: “Go check your brother, he’s dead in the bushes at Darjeeling Drive”.

He went there and found Ndlovu’s body, with his chest and face burnt.

“I was hurt to see him lying there,” Chonco said.

“I knew him as a good boy and not troublesome and he loved his friends.”

Chonco (30), said he last saw him alive on Tuesday evening after watching Generations.

“After the soapie he went out and I went to sleep,” Chonco said.

Electricity inspector Mervyn Patrick said making illegal electricity connections was a regular activity in informal settlements.

On Tuesday, he had been to two other attempts.

“We remove about a ton of illegal wires a week,” he added.

DA councillor Mergan Chetty, who alerted the officials about the incident, said people needed to be educated about the dangers of electricity theft.

“Electricity theft not only poses a danger to the perpetrator, but to the residents as well.”

Chetty added that people use overgrown areas to connect power between the suburbs and Copesville.

Overgrown grass needed to be cut because that was where “izinyoka” hid the cables.

“Illegal connection is dangerous and costs lives,” Chetty added.

The police have opened an inquest docket.

Sunday Tribune: ‘We are being deprived’

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The Sea Cow Lake settlement is not affiliated to AbM.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/we-are-being-deprived-1.1109041

‘We are being deprived’

July 31 2011 at 04:12pm
By NIYANTA SINGH

EThekwini ratepayers are losing R120 million a year to illegal electricity connections and cable theft – and the municipality has admitted it’s losing a “war” with shack dwellers who steal council cables and hotwire power connections.

This week, the city all but conceded it was being held to ransom by hundreds of shack dwellers living on the fringes of Reservoir Hills. In a desperate bid to restore power to frustrated ratepaying households in the area, the council backed off the fight with shack dwellers and let them reconnect illegally.

The city’s head of electricity, Sandile Maphumulo, says the incident is not isolated.

On Friday, shack dwellers threw rocks and packets of faeces at council contractors and security guards who had disconnected illegal connections and confiscated stolen cables in Reservoir Hills.

The windscreen of a security vehicle was shattered and guards fled. Last week, security guard Wiseman Mthombeni was shot dead in nearby Sea Cow Lake in a row over illegal connections.

Sydenham police officers and Public Order Police Unit officers arrived at the Shannon Drive settlement on Friday after security officers were chased away.

By Saturday afternoon, about 200 households in the area had been without electricity for 42 hours.

Electricity was restored for an hour, then went off again.

After an emergency meeting on Friday night, called by ward councillor Themba Mtshali, municipal representatives and residents (rate-payers and informal) it was agreed the council would turn a blind eye to illegal connections and not enter the shack settlement to disconnect.

On Saturday Vincent Zondi of the eThekwini electricity department said of Shannon Drive: “While we seek a solution, we will allow the illegal connections and the guards will not enter to take the cables.”

On Friday, shack residents chanted “no power for one, no power for all” before they sabotaged the main electricity cable to Shannon Drive, pulling the plug on the 200 households. A shack dweller told the Tribune: “We need the electricity to carry on living. We do not feel safe without it and because so many of us are unemployed we have no choice but to steal it.”

Maphumulo said on Friday teams were sent to repair the cables, but the job was made difficult by angry shack dwellers.

“We do try to fix the problem, but we are met with a great level of difficulty because people start to fight with the teams there to assist legal, paying customers. We send our teams with security – and not just light security,” he said.

“Whenever we remove illegal connections, they just reconnect; they just cut the legal power cables. They shoot at our people. It’s not just a problem or challenge. The community has declared war on us. The electricity department can only rely on law enforcement agencies to assist us,” he said.

His colleague, Deena Govender, the municipality’s manager for commercial engineering and marketing, said cable and electricity theft accounted for a two to three percent loss in the municipality’s annual turnover or R120 million a year.

Govender said the municipality battled to balance the needs of paying residents with appeasing shack dwellers. He said the municipality was “turning a blind eye” to illegal connections.

DA caucus leader Tex Collins said ignoring illegal connections was “ludicrous”.

“They can fly a kite if they think that I will pay my electricity bill now. Why should normal residents continue to pay while those who don’t and threaten violence get away with it? They should be locked up.

“Why should these illegal residents be given carte blanche to run this city into bankruptcy? It’s total anarchy. What next – will we be buying them cars?” said Collins.

Minority Front caucus leader Patrick Pillay said it was wrong to allow illegal connections because it gave people false hope.

A ratepayer in Shannon Drive, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals from shack dwellers, said residents were fed up and scared. “How much more must we put up with? We pay our rates and for our electricity; yet we are being deprived. We are very vulnerable. All we ask is for an uninterrupted supply of electricity.”

Said another: “It is not fair for us to put up with this because the municipality cannot get its act together. It is their problem and they must not hide behind meetings, by-laws and red tape.”

Mtshali said although it was unfair for residents to be deprived of services they paid for, he disagreed with the municipal delivery of basic services. “Their processes are fraught with bureaucracy. That makes life unbearable for the have-nots. But something must be done, and we will engage the municipality,” he said. – Sunday Tribune

West Cape News: Protest sparked by attempt to cut illegal electricity connections

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The Island settlement is not affiliated to AbM.

http://westcapenews.com/?p=3248

Protest sparked by attempt to cut illegal electricity connections

AN attempt by Eskom to disconnect illegal electricity connections in Khayelitsha’s Island Informal Settlement sparked violent protests yesterday.

A car was set alight by a petrol bomb and a shipping container was pushed into the busy Lansdowne Road throughfare as about 200 residents scattered rubbish, burnt tyres and stoned passing cars.

The protests, which started mid-morning and only began to simmer down in the late afternoon came after letters from Eskom were delivered to shacks in the settlement yesterday, ordering residents to disconnect their illegal electricity lines or face a fine of R5 000.

A web of wires illegally connecting the shacks to nearby RDP houses hangs over the informal settlement. Wires also run across the across the roads and are buried in shallow trenches in the sand.

But residents say they are not prepared to live without electricity and the City and Eskom need to provide proper connections in their area.

“We connected our lines in Site C’s D-section and some in TR section because Eskom doesn’t want to give us (electricity) boxes,” said resident Nomathamsanqa Kape, 36.

“Since 1989 we have been using illegal connections, every time when we ask Eskom for electricity they give us false promises. I’ve been living in this place since 1989, we never got any service delivery. We were only trying to help ourselves because Eskom doesn’t care,” said Kape.

She said Eskom handed out letters on Wednesday giving residents 24 hours notice to disconnect illegal wiring.

She said residents were prepared to pay for legally supplied electricity as they already paid R200 per month on average to people whose houses they connected to.

“We want power not police,” said resident Athandwe Ndlela, 45.

“We won’t rest until Eskom gives us answers. I have been living in this place for 15 years using illegal connections.”

He said he agreed with Eskom that illegal connections were dangerous, but they had no choice.

“People are dying because of it. Even my brother died last year because of illegal connections. The City of Cape Town and Eskom must provide us with electricity and we won’t stop until that happens.”

Provincial police spokesperson November Filander said two people had been arrested in connection with the protests and charged with public violence. — Nombulelo Damba

The Daily Maverick: Tembisa protests and the shadow of things to come

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http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-09-20-tembisa-protests-and-the-shadow-of-things-to-come

Tembisa protests and the shadow of things to come

On Monday thousands of residents in Tembisa took to the streets to demonstrate primarily against the high price of electricity. They were swiftly dealt with, forcefully, politically and temporarily, but not before giving us some insight into what promises to be a long, hot summer of service-delivery protests. By PHILLIP DE WET.

It takes three data points to show the beginning of a trend, and Tembisa this week provided the third major service delivery protest in Gauteng in as many weeks. The direction is pointing towards “uncomfortable” at best: an increase in the number of such protests in coming months with a good chance for escalation.

Residents of the township took to the streets in their thousands early on Monday morning, blocking tens of kilometres of roads with rubble ranging from paving stones to entire trees and threatening to stone police to keep the roads closed; whether or not there was any actual stone-throwing is a matter of some contention. Though children went to school, much of the rest of Tembisa ground to a halt, with those who are employed being strenuously advised not to go to work, shops remaining closed and even a municipal service centre closed for part of the day. By early evening the protest was halted, for the time being, even though vast sections remained largely impassable to traffic.

Although it far outstripped them in sheer scope, the Tembisa protest was not all that different from similar community uprisings last week in Chiawelo, Soweto, and nearby Themb’elihle in Lenasia. The major underlying complaint is the high cost of electricity, with a laundry list of other complaints (sanitation, housing, healthcare) added as something as an afterthought. Much of the community believes its letters and memorandums and queries have been ignored by an unfeeling local government, that it has been failed by its representatives, and that causing a ruckus is the only way to get noticed.

Notably, though, many of the people we spoke to also believe the government, whether local, provincial or national, can relatively easily improve their lives should it apply its mind to the problem. That is perhaps the most telling difference between communities that try their hand at such protests and their neighbours that do not; where apathy has trumped hope, people still grumble but do little else. Faith that a government that could, for example, turn back the clock on electricity prices by five years is a prerequisite for politics to spill out into the street.

That makes for a large number of contenders, however. The increasing spread between social grants and administered prices is universal. Towns and townships were mobilised ahead of both national and local government elections with promises of change and improvement. Anecdotal evidence is showing even those who don’t closely watch labour statistics that the odds of a DIY improvement in economic circumstances aren’t great. So we wouldn’t bet against further sporadic and, eventually, long-running service-delivery protests everywhere from Gauteng and Cape Town to the rural reaches.

In Tembisa, residents officially agreed to wait on a response from the city before planning their next move, but some of the more militant and perhaps less political young men muttered darkly about petrol bombs and the ease of targeting state infrastructure as a lesson in the power of the people. They were joined by a new crop of radicalised citizens, not so youn, but incensed by heavy-handed police tactics in breaking up small groups of people quietly talking on street corners on the basis that these constituted illegal gatherings. That approach did get major roads and business nodes reopened on the quick, but the bill may come due the next time people decide to stand up to authority.

Organisers in Themb’elihle, Chiawelo and Tembisa have all promised they will not rest until their demands (mostly for electricity, or cheaper electricity) have been met. In all three communities they hope to do that through negotiations spurred by their attention-getting tactics. In all three they are likely to be frustrated and again grow impatient. In all three they have at least the tacit support of the majority of residents for protest action – without a great deal of concern about keeping such action entirely peaceful. It could be a long, hot summer.