Soweto shrugs off Eskom bill
Committee to look at ’culture’ of nonpayment as township’s arrears hit R4bn
AS Eskom runs out of power and money, one of its biggest suburban consumers — Soweto — continues to rack up electricity debts.
In arrears dating back more than a decade, the township’s unpaid electricity bills now total R4-billion — five times more than the collective debt of Eskom’s next three top defaulters.
Of the 80 000 Soweto households without prepaid meters, only one in six pays for the electricity it uses.
The municipalities of Ngwathe, Dihlabeng and Maluti-aPhofung in the Free State, which follow Soweto as the worst nonpayers, owe just more than R700-million in total.
The Soweto arrears date from 2003 and cover about 150 000 households directly supplied by Eskom, with 70 000 of these on prepaid systems.
A few hundred other households in Orlando and Klipspruit West are supplied by Johannesburg’s City Power.
Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown said an interministerial committee was looking at the “culture” of not paying by Soweto consumers and those in other municipalities.
Brown said the National Treasury would give Eskom R10-billion in June as part of a financial package announced last year.
Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said there were households that could not afford to pay as they could “rightfully be declared indigent”, but the township also had many middle- class and wealthy families.
“If you looked at the income survey released last year, it showed that there are quite a lot of people with a higher income there,” he said.
The nationwide Roots 2013 survey showed that property prices in the area were increasing, an indication of a growing middle class. The survey also found that household income in Soweto suburbs ranged from R6 000 in Jabavu to R8 900 in Orlando and R11 400 in Protea.
There seemed to be “an unofficial strategy” of government agencies and local authorities to look “the other way when certain communities are not paying”, Mathekga said.
“The unwritten criteria seems to be that the communities that are in the voting camp of the ANC are usually not given a hard time when it comes to nonpayment of rates and electricity,” he added.
The Soweto debt has grown rapidly in the past 11 years, since Eskom wrote off R1.4-billion in bad debt in 2003.
Eskom confirmed it had managed a compliance level of only 16% among Soweto customers.
Pensioner Martha Mokate from Meadowlands last paid her electricity bill 15 years ago after being disconnected for nonpayment.
“Eskom didn’t bother reconnecting my house even after I had paid, so I reconnected myself and I don’t even get electricity bills any more,” she said.
Eskom spokesman Khulu Phasiwe said it was rolling out a split-metering system that would enable it to manage individual users and eliminate illegal connections. It has a pilot scheme in Chiawelo, Soweto, and will extend this to 67 000 users this year.
Energy analyst Chris Yelland said nonpayment was so entrenched that it was going to take more than just smart meters to resolve it.
The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, formed in 2000, opposed disconnections.
It accused Eskom of failing to “seriously invest” in alternative energy because it chased profit.
Committee secretary Danny Mogotsi said most households in Soweto could not afford to pay for electricity. Solar power and writing off the debt were the solutions, he said. TOWERING DEBT: Soweto’s Orlando Towers in 2007. Residents of the township owe billions to Eskom, which is struggling to keep the country’s lights on