Greenville informal settlement residents say they are trapped in an endless cycle where illegal power connections trigger disconnections by City Power, only for the wires to go back up again.

City Power led the latest cut-off operation in the area early this month and cited the settlement’s location as an obstacle to electrifying it.

Residents have now been left without any hope that the matter will ever be resolved. Community leader Phindi Mbedu, who has been vocal about challenges affecting the area, said multiple media reports had been made, but nothing has changed.

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Now, most residents have given up the fight

Alex News previously reported that City Power cited Greenville’s location as an impediment to electrification because the settlement sits under high-voltage lines.

“This creates significant safety and planning constraints and makes it difficult to formally proclaim the area for conventional housing and provide a fully formalised electricity network,” City Power said in a statement.

Hazardous power grid split community

Another community leader, Patrick Ngidi, said the back-and-forth, which has no end in sight, is most troubling for families with a patient whose medication must be refrigerated. “If you have children who are placed on medical treatment because some medications have to be refrigerated… if that does not happen, you are jeopardising the life of a person,” he said.

The spread of unsafe connections has also exposed divisions in the community. Residents with children in particular fear the price of power could be too high if their children risk electrocution.

City Power raised a similar concern when it last disconnected the area on September 9. The utility expressed concern about Greenville’s proximity to Zenzele Primary School, where unsafe infrastructure puts learners, teachers, and the wider school community at unnecessary risk.

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Ngidi acknowledged that some residents connect wires recklessly even when they can see the danger to others. “They pretend as if they do not see it, but they do,” he said. “That is the situation that is prevailing on the ground.”

Ngidi said the danger reaches into daily chores. He added that bare wires that could easily be mistaken for a washing line run overhead, where a single mistake while hanging out laundry could be fatal.

While City Power, through cut-off operations, wanted to address this safety risk, the underlying problem remains: residents have no lawful access to electricity. As a result, the same hazardous connections keep going up as people look for power.

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