GARETH LINDSAY writes:
On the morning of June 8, residents of Kempton Park awoke to find they had no electricity. This was one more annoyance in a month-long saga that had seen various parts of the city cut off from power or water, or indeed, both simultaneously, as a plague of infrastructure issues gripped the city.
According to information received at the time from calls to the municipality, the outage was caused by an explosion in the Glen Marais substation. The resulting fire would keep response teams from accessing the station for a further 12 hours.
The resulting power outage has affected the entire Kempton Park. Some areas, such as Birchleigh and Van Riebeeck Park, saw their power return that Sunday, during the early hours of the morning. Other suburbs, such as Allen Grove, Glen Marais and Norkem Park, were not so fortunate. Power has still not been restored to all areas as at the time of writing this, a full six days later.
The sentiment among the affected residents is turbulent, to say the least. On June 12 angry residents protested along Plane Road, demanding answers from a local government who has been reluctant to share information. Whatever information has been brought forward by the local government has proven to be inaccurate or, in the view of some residents, outright lies.
The cost in terms of productivity and material has yet to be fully accounted, but many residents have stated on public forums that the perishables in their fridges and freezers have been lost.
In a day and age where food is as expensive as it is, the economic effect of this power outage will be felt for weeks to come by affected residents.
The question of what follows this lapse in local governance has yet to be answered by the people in charge. This recalcitrance to accept responsibility or plan a way forward is only highlighted by the cold, dark anger of our residents.
“Democracy is not simply a licence to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community,” writes author Aberjhani, highlighting the gravest symptom of our ailing democracy.
In this light, the need for accountability from our elected officials is clear. There is a clear necessity to form an inquiry into the actions (or lack thereof) that resulted in the power outage that affected our city.
Every citizen of Kempton Park should demand an account of the causes for this outage and an actionable plan to prevent further inconveniences of the sort.
The status quo is no longer tenable. It is unreasonable to expect the people of Kempton Park to quietly accept the horrible failing of infrastructure around us.
We are a gateway city, we are the doorstep upon which most of Africa arrives. It is time our city’s officials lived up to that responsibility.
