The African National Congress stands to lose substantial support in Soweto if it does not intervene in the township’s electricity crisis - arguably the most serious crisis the biggest township in the country has faced since democracy.

Soweto residents without electricity and jobs who sat discontentedly outside their homes and on the streets in the winter sun this week said they were fast losing faith in the government’s ability to deliver on basic services such as electricity.

At the Moroka police station protest on Wednesday three Soweton residents were shot by Eskom security guards who showed up during the demonstration. Residents were protesting over the indiscriminate cutting off of electricity at a rate of 20 000 houses a month.

The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) has planned a massive march on Saturday to Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo’s office in protest against blanket cut-offs.

Electricity has been cut to police stations, clinics, supermarkets and homes, whether or not owners and occupants were in arrears - and many were fully paid up.

Residents are also up in arms over the massive bribery and corruption of many Eskom contract workers, who they say will reconnect them for a fee. “If the bungling over the supply of electricity is not happening they would not have to engage in this bribery or illegal reconnections,” says a member of the SECC.

“One day you pay R500 to Eskom’s contract workers, money you have collected from your pensioner granny, to reconnect you. You get reconnected and then three days later you get cut off again, so that they can collect more money to reconnect again, and this is happening to everyone here. Talk to the people yourself,” said a resident.

Virginia Setshedi, deputy chairperson of the SECC, representing thousands of Sowetans affected by the electricity crisis, says there is a politi-cal context: “Government zero-rated paraffin, so that if we cannot afford electricity we will have to use zero-rated paraffin. Instead of uplifting our lives, government is taking us down. Government is to blame for turning a blind eye to cut-offs, saying ‘Eskom, you can do whatever you like’.”

The Department of Public Enterprises intends steamrolling the privatisation of electricity with the Eskom Conversion Bill, which is about to be passed in Parliament.

This restructuring means that the cost of electricity will rise by between 22% and 50%, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). But Eskom says it would lose R500-million a year if it had to go ahead with supplying 50kW/h free electricity to residents, proposed by government to begin on July 1.

This week Cosatu severed all ties with the Department of Public Enterprises and has asked for the highest political intervention by the ANC in the electricity crisis. It intends to serve a Section 77 notice to the National Economic Development and Labour Council to embark on a general strike against privatisation should the government’s plans go ahead without any concessions to its demands.

When the Mail & Guardian visited Soweto this week, desperate residents showed proof that they had not received electricity for months - yet were getting bills amounting to tens of thousands of rands.

At a meeting of the SECC this week, pensioners came in with electricity bills - R35 000 in one instance, R107 000 in another, and R80 000 - yet most had not been supplied with electricity for years, some not since 1994.

The manager of Roman Supermarket in Orlando East, Masitebe Bhekuzulu, said she lost R10 000 in one week due to food rotting because of the indiscriminate cut-offs. She had been paying her bills.

Dr Mohamed Kahn, head of the Orlando Clinic, said: “This is an absolute disaster. Even when I worked in Pakistan I never experienced this. We had to put medicine in cooler bags and rush them to Chris Hani Baragwanath.

“Medication is getting stolen through this and the crisis is killing the community. Old people, children and asthmatics were badly affected by the cut offs.” The clinic did not have electricity arrears.

Resident Simpiwe Maphala said he voted in the 1994 general election but the next day his electricity was cut off. To this day he has had no electricity but last month he received a bill for R1 922, which he showed to the M&G.

Most residents interviewed said they were households of unemployed people, often living off a pensioner relative’s money. And pensioners, who are using paraffin in their homes, are now attending SECC committee meetings waving their bills in the air. They are saying enough is enough; they want delivery.

Grade 10 pupil Bridget Searole said: “We are nine children living in this house [one-bedroomed]. Our mother is mentally disturbed. We got money from our granny to reconnect us last month. They charged us R1 200, then a few days later they cut us off again.”

Cosatu says that the Department of Public Enterprises is acting in bad faith and reneging on all promises for free electricity. “This is the culmination of a history of interaction with the department on the Bill, characterised by bad-faith negotiations, duplicitous conduct, and broken agreements.”

Head of public relations for Eskom Clarence Kwinana said: “We don’t do that [indiscriminate cut-offs]. We make sure bills are correct. People who feel they have wrong bills can go to the nearest Eskom office to get it sorted out. Those who are in arrears are hiding behind those who are paying. These are the culprits.”

About bribes residents say Eskom workers extract from them, Kwinana said: “I’m aware of reports that point to that effect, reports from the press.”

Daily Mail Guardian

-- Anonymous, June 12, 2001

Answers

From the archives:

SA: Service Bill Errors Treble'

-- Anonymous, June 12, 2001

Not so much the incorrect billing as the disturbing realism that across this country, California included, people are being, and will be, evicted from their homes for not maintaining electricity, gas, water, etc. for health reasons, of course. Have Municipal, County, State laws been changed to prevent these forced evictions from happening should long term (weeks?) power outages occur...I don't think so. The implications are frightening.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2001