DA calls on Eskom to hand Delft electricity supply over to the City of Cape Town

7 August 2024

Thousands of Delft residents were left without power and in the dark from Sunday until Friday last week, causing significant hardship and loss of supplies. The areas affected were The Hague, N2 Gateway and a portion of Rosendal. These residents are all direct Eskom customers, not supplied by the City of Cape Town.

Angry protests erupted on Stellenbosch Arterial Road and the Eskom site. A lack of clear communication from Eskom exacerbated the situation. Local officials, particularly the ward councillor, face misplaced blame for an outage outside their control. Eskom technicians eventually restored power to residents after several failed attempts.

Direct Eskom customers in this region have experienced electricity woes for many years including unscheduled outages for long periods, slow response times and poor communication by Eskom. One resident reports being without electricity for almost a year because she needs a new meter box. Eskom’s response is that no meter boxes are available, and they do not know when it will become available.

It is hardly surprising that residents’ frustrations have regularly erupted into street protests. For instance, in June residents of Happy Valley were burning tires in Wimbledon Road.

Communities also affected by poor service from Eskom include Kleinvlei, Rustdal, Penhill, Wesbank, Kalkfontein, Leiden and others. Furthermore, other areas supplied by Eskom are Belhar, Khayelitsha, Elsiesrivier, Montague Gardens, Bothasig, Parklands, among others.

To add insult to injury, Eskom recently closed its only customer contact centre in the region, formerly located in Belville. Eskom is replacing it with mobile offices which will rotate through Eskom-supplied areas on certain days, limiting accessibility to residents for weeks at a time.

In order to address these issues, the City of Cape Town reached out to Eskom on several occasions to initiate feasibility assessments with a view to create a pathway for the handover of Eskom supply areas to the City. Unfortunately, Eskom walked away from those discussions.

The DA calls upon Eskom to do what is in the best interests of residents in Delft and other areas for which they are responsible in Cape Town and recommence these discussions with the City.

The DA is committed to ensuring that all residents of Cape Town have access to an uninterrupted electricity supply.

Issued by Andrew Bateman, DA Constituency Head, Oostenberg South, 7 August 2024