The City of Johannesburg’s ability to provide reliable electricity to residents is being severely threatened as power infrastructure is being pilfered on an industrial scale operated by armed criminal syndicates.

In the latest incident, two security guards were held at gunpoint at the City Power’s Cydna substation near Norwood at 04:00 on March 30 after being attacked by a gang armed with high-calibre assault rifles driving in unmarked 4x4s.

After overpowering security guards, the gang made off with several hundred kilograms of underground copper cabling, using their vehicles to rip this critical infrastructure from the ground.

“This is showing all the signs of criminal groups that are well resourced and organised. It is no longer just theft but robbery on a grand scale,” said Michael Sun, MMC for environment infrastructure service (EIS).”

Since July, 14 56 cases of vandalism and cable theft have been reported to City Power, which cost the entity R24-million in damages and repairs. With confrontations between City Power security and would-be criminals occurring on an almost daily basis at substations and other infrastructure points around Johannesburg.

Hot spots include Lenasia, Alexandra, Northriding, Mulbarton, Ennerdale, Nasrec and Roodepoort. The situation is exacerbated because most of the City’s cable servitudes pass through open fields, making them vulnerable to theft.

“We will beef up security at hot spots and ensuring we have more personnel at all our substations. We are also installing CCTV systems to act as an early warning system,” Sun added.

“But the simple fact is that if we don’t have an urgent intervention from the SAPS on this issue, it will remain a critical challenge to providing reliable electricity to Johannesburg residents. It is only SAPS that can investigate these criminals and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that can prosecute them.”

Cable theft is responsible for most of the outages in the City and causes major disruptions to the Johannesburg energy grid. The overall losses suffered by City Power in the total areas of supply because of copper cable theft and damage to electricity essential infrastructure for the 2021/22 financial year alone was R24-m.

The community can play a key role in stamping out cable theft and robberies and Sun calls upon all residents to play their part in reporting all suspicious behaviour in or around the city’s electricity infrastructure to authorities.

“With the absence of these enforcement powers, we will have to rely on our own already stretched capacity and are thus calling on all community members to act with the City too. If you see something suspicious, report it immediately,” he said.

This approach has already bore some fruit when directly after Sun hosted a public meeting to update on progress in upgrading the Eldorado Park substation, two would-be cable thieves were caught red-handed by regional City Power manager Tiro Mokgosi, local ward councillor Juwairiya Kaldine and community members. The two suspects were handed over to the Eldorado Park Police Station.

“When the team arrived on the scene, the thieves were still busy but ran away when they saw the members approaching. Unfortunately, they could not outrun the members and were caught. I hope they will receive lengthy sentences for the crimes they are committing against their community,” said Sun.