Vukani residents have all but given up on receiving formal electricity, despite City Power assurances that the project will be completed soon.

City Power acting CEO Charles Tloune previously said the electrification project should be completed by the end of the 2026/27 financial year.

However, Mgebe Gangathele, who has led the Vukani community since 2011, said he no longer believes that timeline will hold. “Now, there is no hope,” he said. “It is no longer there.”

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According to Gangathele, repeated delays caused by delayed payments to contractors have left him doubtful the work will be finished within any timeframe City Power sets.

Progress stalled despite infrastructure

Some progress has been made. Internal reticulation work is under way, with City Power cables reaching some households and meters already installed in others, but Gangathele said the work needed to actually switch on electricity supply to the settlement remains outstanding.

Overhead City Power lines already run through parts of the settlement, a visible sign of progress that, at one stage, gave residents hope formal power was imminent.

Yet Vukani continues to rely on informal, illegal connections, which Gangathele acknowledged pose a serious danger to residents, including children.

He said the community’s frustration has been building for years, driven by repeated promises of formal electricity access that have yet to materialise.

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Contractors down tools over non-payment

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena confirmed that contractors on the Vukani project had, at points, downed tools because of delayed payments from the utility. This is a problem, he said, extended well beyond this single project.

“I think we did communicate those kinds of issues around payment to contractors, where some of them had [to] leave the site because they could not continue working,” Mangena said.

“They were not able to pay for their materials. They were not even able to pay for the sub-contractors that are working there. Even the expanded public works programme, and community liaison officers, and so forth. It was an untenable situation that we found ourselves in.”

He said the payment crisis was not unique to Vukani but had affected most of City Power’s projects across Johannesburg.

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By around June, he said, the utility was sitting on a backlog of roughly R1.2b owed to contractors. “I think a lot of those have been paid,” Mangena said.

“Remember, we pay those who were not paid, but there are still others that are bringing in invoices. So, it is a moving target.”

He added that City Power is now monitoring whether payments made to contractors are in turn reaching subcontractors and workers on the ground.

Mangena described Vukani as a two-phase project, with the first phase now almost complete. He said phase two should begin soon.

“What we want to solve in Vukani is the issue of illegal connections,” Mangena said. “Issues of electricity theft that are happening there. The issue is that they are inconveniencing the normalised houses, where the network overloads and trips often, and the residents are not able to enjoy electricity.”

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