R555 burning
The community stood together and stood their ground until the municipality started working on the electricity problem that had left them in the dark for 10 days.
Residents from Jackaroo Park are fed up with service delivery problems. The community stood together and stood their ground until the municipality started working on the electricity problem that had left them in the dark for 10 days.
They disrupted the flow of traffic on the Old Middelburg Road, R555, by putting stones and burning tyres in the road, blocking traffic heading to and from Middelburg. This created havoc as motorists were forced to use alternative routes on Monday, November 28 and Monday, December 5.
“It is clear that the government and municipalities respond to protests. We had to make our voices heard and the only way we as residents agreed upon doing this is embarking on a protest action,” said Ms Sophia Stroh Booysen, a resident of Clearwater Estate.
The estate forms part of Jackaroo Park.
The electricity to Jackaroo Park is supplied from Blanchville Substation via two 11kV feeders which form a ring feed supply. The first feeder runs along Adele Street and through the open veldt, and the second feeder runs along the Old Middelburg Road. This feeder was supplied by an underground cable which was stolen and had to be replaced with an overhead line with interconnecting underground cables.
However, the overhead line was also vandalised and the interconnecting cable also stolen. The thieves did not even leave the poles undamaged on November 21. Two days later on November 23 the overhead line was damaged and interconnecting cables at the three-way stop and adjacent to Second Avenue were stolen.
Adele Street also fell prey to vandalism on November 28 when the underground feeder cable was stolen.
The stroke of a series of unfortunate events did not stop there. The 22kV bulk supply to Blanchville Substation was stolen on December 3 along the Old Middelburg Road next to Sasol Garage which also resulted in the store being off, for a prolonged period.
To add more fuel to the fire the cable in Adele Street also picked up a fault on December 4.
Later that evening while the municipality was still searching for the problem on the electric line the community policing forums from Blanchville, Highveldpark and Seekoeiwater caught two thieves stealing cable. The cable the thieves stole was not live. In fact it had been lying idle for more than a year giving thieves the ideal opportunity to strip it.
An electrician in the private sector, Mr Antoni Janse van Nieuwenhuizen said if the ring feed cable from Doornpoort was repaired a year ago there would be no problems.
Minutes turned into hours and hours into days. Fury grew as residents had to start throwing away meat and other food items that had thawed and gone off.
Fuming with anger at the loss of thousands of rands of food the community could no longer stay quiet and took to the R555.
Tension rose as police were summoned to the scene to keep the protest under control.
Residents spoke up and Mr Gideon Pitout said he feels that the residents should appoint a lawyer to represent the community so that the municipality could reimburse them for their losses.
“More than 70% of the community had to throw food away. We pay for basic services, amongst other electricity, still we are deprived of it,” said Mr Robert Tiberi.
Mr Themba Lepopo, who moved to Jackaroo Park in 2011, predicted another dark Christmas. He said they had four Christmases without electricity.
The owners of a guesthouse in the area had to throw away R12 000 worth of meat,
“No one is going to reimburse me. We are business people, but these kinds of service delivery hick-ups are costing us money. How can we stay afloat?” said Ms Marinda Moore.
Mr Joseph Muluti had a solution for the situation. He said the police should, instead of wasting taxpayer’s money on deploying police to a peaceful protest use the same police to guard the electric cables until it is so secure that no thieve can get their hands on it.
But it is not just Jackaroopark that has been crippled by power outages.
On December 5 Seekoeiwater, Blanchville, a part of Highveldpark and Modelpark also experienced no electricity.
Christmas is around the corner and with the unstable electricity supply in the municipality no-one can predict if we are going to have a dark Christmas or not.
Municipal Manager Theo van Vuuren said that they experienced five incidents of vandalism in the Jackaroo Park and Blanchville areas over the past two weekends despite increased security.
“I will be meeting with Witbank Station commander to discuss a special intervention as this suggest that the syndicate linked to Gauteng crime has returned after our previous special operation in March this year stopped them,” he said.
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