Only about 300 of the roughly 10 500 electricity customers in Ward 76 in Alexandra actually buy power, according to City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena.

That figure, under 3%, is part of the reason why City Power says it can no longer sustain services in the area without intervention. The utility began a formal meter auditing process in Ward 76 on August 31, aimed at identifying illegal connections and widespread meter bypassing. Mangena revealed that about 10 200 customers in the area are not purchasing electricity.

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He identified Ward 76 as one of several in Alexandra that have long frustrated City Power’s efforts to run a financially viable network. Mangena said the ward alone has cost the utility heavily this year, with numerous transformers damaged and needing replacement since January.

That pattern repeats across the broader Alexandra community. Alexandra, according to City Power, has roughly 40 959 registered customers in total, but only around 2 382 are actively purchasing electricity. This shows that the Ward 76 shortfall is not an isolated problem but close to the norm.

Mangena emphasised that the fix starts with getting residents onto the books and paying for what they use. “They need to start contributing towards revenue, towards maintenance costs, [and] buying of the materials that they need to basically service them,” he said.

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The auditing process follows commitments City Power made at a recent imbizo with the community, where it agreed to begin what it calls a normalisation process. Mangena said the first step is establishing exactly how many households the utility actually needs to service and how many of those, like the bulk of Ward 76, are drawing power without paying for it. The audits will identify how many residents are legitimately purchasing electricity, how many are not, and how many meters have been bypassed altogether.

Mangena said ordinarily, residents caught bypassing meters would face a penalty of around R14 000 under law, but assured that City Power will not apply that during the normalisation process. “We are not going to make any resident pay any fee. We want to start on a clean slate with the residents. We want to basically say we are coming here in peace to make sure that we do things right,” Mangena said.

Instead, City Power is asking for a once-off R500 commitment payment once a new meter is installed. Of that, R210 goes toward monthly service charges, while the remainder is credited back to the customer as electricity units once the normalisation process is complete.

Mangena described the payment as a signal of good faith rather than a fee – proof, he said, that residents intend to pay for electricity going forward.

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