DARK TIMES: ESKOM TO CUT JOHANNESBURG’S ELECTRICITY SUPPLY

Fri 08 November 2024:

Loadshedding may be over Johannesburg’s journey through a dark tunnel is not. Eskom intends to cut the city’s electricity supply over a multi-billion Rand bill.

Eskom plans to interrupt electricity supply to some areas from 14 December. The power utility says the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) owes R4.9 billion, and that an additional R1.4 billion will be due at the end of the month.

“Despite all the avenues that Eskom explored and efforts to accommodate the CoJ, the matter has reached a point where Eskom can simply no longer afford to accommodate the CoJ without putting further financial strain on and harming its own business,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

Wayne Duvenage, CEO of the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), said the city had fallen into the wrong hands, and that Eskom was well within its rights to move against the city.

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“Eskom have been pretty patient and now they are exercising their rights to start withholding power supply to the city of Joburg. It might sound like a bad thing for the people, but the people that need to be blamed is the City of Joburg management and not Eskom in this regard,” he said.

In response, the CoJ slammed the move as “unjust, counterproductive, and potentially harmful to the residents and businesses of Johannesburg”.

It accused Eskom of overbilling the amount of R3.4 billion. It will now explore legal options to keep the lights on.

“The City, in consultation with its legal counsel, will explore all available legal avenues to prevent any disruptions to the electricity supply. We urge Eskom to reassess its stance and engage with the City in finding a mutually beneficial resolution,” a statement read.

Duvenage said it was time residents had a chance to reclaim the city from politicians who did not have their best interests at heart.

“What this is getting closer and closer to now is civil society calling for a dissolution of this council. Maybe we have to go to new elections sooner rather than later. I don’t think we can wait until 2026 to have this issue resolved,” he commented.

“We’ve had musical chairs. We’ve had changes in leadership and yet nothing happens. We took out a R2.5 billion rand loan earlier this year to deal with infrastructure matters from from the French banks and well we don’t see anything happening. In fact, it’s got worse – our traffic lights are all out on a daily basis, the roads are getting worse, water leaks and the list goes on. We’ve really got to to do something differently.”