Fed-up residents say mayor failed to keep ‘no loadshedding’ promise

Residents in the east of Pretoria are angry that they still had loadshedding even though Tshwane mayor Randall Williams promised that their areas would be exempt.

“I feel lied to,” said Morelatapark resident Leanne Kruger, who was sitting in the dark while speaking to Rekord.

“I just feel like the DA doesn’t have our backs. It disgusts me that you as a leader can stand up in front of the whole country on national news and say we are not going to have loadshedding and then have loadshedding literally at the first loadshedding.”

Williams promised residents in Moreleta Park, Pretorius Park, Mooikloof, Olympus, Woodlands and parts of Garsfontein that they wouldn’t be subject to any loadshedding because the Mooikloof substation was vulnerable to the constant switching.

Residents in these areas were stuck without any electricity for 14 days in December after the substation caught fire.

At a press briefing, Williams said vulnerable substations, such as Wapadrand and Mooikloof, would be exempt from loadshedding “to save them from further harm”.

Much to residents’ surprise, residents’ electricity went off despite promises it wouldn’t.

On top of that, their loadshedding would be longer than Eskom’s two-hour schedule due to trips and faulty cables.

Kruger said the metro’s communication about the matter was even worse than the broken promise.

“We were only told of the reasons why we are still having loadshedding during loadshedding – and only because one of our residents phoned the Tshwane metro chief of staff.”

She said the response to prolonged power outages was poor as residents often had to wait for hours for electricity to return.

“We get promised firstly no loadshedding; that gets retracted and then we get promised standby teams, and that doesn’t even happen. So when does the lying stop?

“We pay rates and taxes. It’s unacceptable,” said another resident in the area, Sharlene van Niekerk.

“When it’s elections, they make so much effort to communicate; but when it’s time to put in the work, they don’t,” she said.

She said during the December outage, they spent R10 000 on the running costs of a generator they had to buy.

“We lost so much food. We had to buy a generator,” she said.

“The funny thing was that at the end of the month our bill comes – and it’s exactly the same as the previous month,” she said.

“We pay so much tax – and for what?”

Carien Grobbelaar, a mother of two, said she and her family went for 17 hours without electricity after loadshedding.

“I am so fed up. We had such a horrible time in December when we had Covid and there was no electricity,” she said.

“We had to quarantine and it was cold and rainy; it was really a hard time for us. Plus, we have two children we must care of as well.”

According to ward councillor Malcom de Klerk, “there was been a breakdown in what was said and what should have happened”.

“This has caused a lot of volatility and tension.”

De Klerk said the substation suffered from faulty cables, resulting in prolonged outages.

The Tshwane metro has since said that Wapadrand and Kentron were excluded from loadshedding due to “vulnerabilities of our infrastructure in these areas”, but not the Mooikloof substation.

Metro chief of staff Jordon Griffiths said the metro was not granted approval to exempt the Mooikloof substation from loadshedding in terms of Nersa regulations.

These regulations looked at the safety of people; the safety of the environment; the potential damage to plants associated with a critical national product (wastewater treatment works); and technical constraints on executing loadshedding.

“Based on these criteria, and where possible, the city does exclude national key points, major hospitals, major central business districts and areas where there are major crowds gathered for specific events on temporary bases,” he said

Unfortunately, Mooikloof did not qualify for an exemption.

“We have to obey the national standard for loadshedding.”

He said when the mayor made the promise their view was that Mooikloof would be approved, but it wasn’t.

Meanwhile, residents have signed a petition titled “Tswhane ward 91 power outages”. The petition has over 400 signatures and will be handed to the mayor.

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