Grim weekend for Mdantsane’s ‘Beverley Hills’

IT was a miserable, long, dark weekend for about 20 households in NU1 who watched helplessly as their food spoiled and their cellphones ran down before they bathed in lukewarm water due to an electricity outage for most of the weekend.

The families – who live on double plots in NU1 near the tennis court in an area known as Beverley Hills – were driven from their affluent homes in search of electricity after a sudden power failure on Saturday morning.

Although electricity supply was restored on Monday afternoon, the irate ratepayers claim such power failures are common in their community. Yesterday, electricity was temporarily restored for about two hours, but then it cut out again. The Dispatch was notified by residents at 5.10pm that their rejoicing had been short-lived.

Ovayo Hlela, who lives with her family of seven, said the outages were a never-ending nightmare.

“We experience this problem nearly every other week. It did stop for a while. But now it is recurring and it is a shock. We have lost so much food that was in the fridge, and which we were forced to throw out.

“We have had to bath in cold water and stay in complete darkness with no television.”

Hlela said she had recently refurbished her home, but could no longer enjoy it.

“We built our house and beautified it because we wanted to stay comfortably, but now we have no choice but to consider selling because of the problem in this area, which will ultimately affect the value of our property,” she said.

Pensioner Marjorie Time said she did not owe the municipality a single cent so to be without electricity, and with no explanation, was infuriating

“We are living in Mdantsane and paying exorbitant amounts for rates, but still we are ill-treated like this. It is so painful. To buy a house and pay rates every month, only to be without electricity for days, is torture – and what is worse is that the municipality does not bother to restore the electricity immediately nor do they even bother to communicate about what is going on,” she said.

Time said they had to buy ready-cooked food every day to feed the family throughout the outage.

“It’s bad enough we have to ask people to charge our cell phones at their houses.

“We couldn't ask to cook as well and we had to buy food all the time. I'm a pensioner, that’s just spending money I don’t have,” she said.

Sisanda Guzana said that out of frustration she went and stayed with a friend for the duration of the outage.

“I just could not hang around, it’s too depressing. Everything is just compromised when there’s no electricity. If this was happening somewhere in the suburbs it would have been dealt with promptly, even though we are also ratepayers.

“But because we are in the township, nobody cares. It is so degrading going door to door asking if we can iron clothes or charge phones as if we have not paid for electricity. What’s worst is the amount of spoilt food we had to throw out after grocery shopping on the 25th.”

BCM spokesman Samkelo Ngwenya blamed the outage on illegal connections in the vicinity.

“People tampering with electricity are the ones responsible for the outages happening and while the municipality is working to fast-track the electrification of informal settlements to avoid illegal connections, there are still a handful who are accustomed to the illegal electricity, which they do not pay for.

“Unfortunately our electricians rely on the support of law enforcement to remove the illegal connections and restore the power supply,” he said.

Ngwenya said he would further investigate how they could find a permanent solution for the area.

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