Residents of Naturena, south of Johannesburg, went to the streets on Tuesday to gain the attention of the City of Joburg Metro after months without reliable water and power.
Residents barricaded roads leading into and out of the area with burning tires and objects.
The protesting residents said expressed their concerns. “We want electricity here; we want it now. We want electricity that will be a long-term solution; this is a basic human right,” one of the residents who wanted to remain anonymous said.
One of the community leaders, Shone Coutrils, said the protest was long overdue because service delivery has been a problem for a while.
“The whole protest is based on protest we have had cable theft it started every month, and it has now moved to a weekly basis, but right now we are without electricity for more than five days and water exactly the same situation,” Countrils said.
Another resident said the lack of electricity was affecting even the school children.
“My daughter this morning was studying using a cell phone light; this situation is really affecting us badly,” she said.
City Power spokesperson,Isaac Mangena, said they are working on restoring electricity at Naturena and surrounding areas affected by power cuts.
“The outages were mainly due to multiple cable faults, with some due to a series of cable thefts in the area. Vandalism and theft of the infrastructure contributed to most of our outages. However, recently we have noted a lot of pressure on the network due to overloading. The overloading, which happens mostly during peak hours of the evening and morning, is due to the illegal connections in the area, and also the increase in demand for power due to dropping temperatures,” he said.
Mangena said overloading on the network grid occurs during pick hours.
“The protests in the area may disrupt City Power’s efforts to reach some areas to do the repairs, and we appeal for cooperation and restraint. We won’t hesitate to pull our teams out of the area should we feel their lives and City Power property are threatened.”