Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886.
The valuable product brought industry to the East Rand with its gleaming underground arterial grids of potential. You simply staked your claim to an area by announcing it. It was a time of true economic freedom. If you could negotiate it and protect it, it was yours. Rapid growth was guaranteed, as supply was bountiful and government intervention minimal. It attracted businessmen, artisans, prostitutes, opportunity – and gangsterism. Sooner or later, territory had to be protected with force or threat of force. It was like the Wild West.
There is a new gold rush on the East Rand, but the commodity is not gold – it is electricity. Ekurhuleni Metro is collapsing. With the lack of law enforcement electricity is becoming a natural resource sprouting like fountains from our substations and feeding into the overhead cabling capillaries.
More and more people are catching on and staking claims. People are killing each other for the opportunity to mine the existing infrastructure. It’s feudal out here. We have a government or council, but to get by on a day-to-day basis, we resort to giving fealty to the electricity overlords in the area, in whatever form they present themselves. The distinction between tax, levy, membership fees and extortion money is becoming blurred. What is the difference anyway?
The only meaningful distinction is that the government just has more guns – for now. You pay what you can, to balance cost and convenience. Welcome to the Wild East.
This is how it works.
There is a rock in front of the door of our sub-station on the corner of my street. It acts as the key. Anyone can, and many do, open it and fiddle with the wires when the power is out. I think I am the only one in the street who does not know how to operate the box (not because I think it is the wrong thing to do, but because I fear I might blow everything up by mistake.) So I watch while the others do it and keep my fingers crossed. There are three main lines, representing phases, connected to the 400Amp circuit breaker; red, yellow and blue. There are burn marks all over them and the red line is dangerously swollen. It looks like the parts have been fastened with masking tape and homemade lugs, because they have.
When she blows
Sooner or later, the CB will blow again. My street is overloaded. When she blows, we have a few options to get electricity back. Most of them do not include logging a call on the CoE app and waiting patiently for the council members to do their jobs, like getting rid of the illegal connections or upgrading the infrastructure. We source and replace the equipment ourselves, assisted by council technicians who moonlight as private contractors and an impromptu electricity cartel who knows how to get things done and sometimes shakes us down or manipulates us to donate money so we can have our electricity back.
When the power goes out for a few days, we gather on the pavements and wait for an electricity whore to show up on the corner in a bakkie. These technicians go to the street corner like Bree Street hookers and wait to see who will buy their wares. Right there in the open, we negotiate and collect money for whatever parts we decide on. Sometimes the collection takes the form of someone going door to door to gather donations, anything from R20 to R500 per household. Or you send the money via E -Wallet. The list is published so everyone can see who has given and who has not. The money collection has gone from extortion with the threat of force to a type of willing stokvel; I don’t know which is worse. The parts are then ‘acquired’ from a variety of sources, including the back door of the Johannesburg City Power energy supply store. We’ve stopped asking where they come from. When the power goes back on, so do our lives. We are off the grid.
It does not always have a good ending. Earlier this year, an electrician was shot in Boksburg while trying to attend to a problem at a sub-station. Rumour has it that he was working outside of his area. In Ekurhuleni, cables are not repaired by council workers. The council subcontracts the work.
Get the contract
The business model is to get the contract to fix cables. If there is a territorial dispute, things get ugly. Technicians are starting to refuse to attend to problems without an armed escort, for fear of attack from rival ‘gangs’ or private citizens.
In the suburb just south of mine, an armed group of citizens held a ‘private contractor’ hostage with the threat of bodily harm. He had tried to hustle them into buying an R5,800 Medium Voltage Joint Kit they didn’t need. He planned to sell the parts to the suburb to the east of mine for a profit. Free enterprise thrives when you have an unlimited supply of desperate people.
Next door in Klippoortje, a mob apprehended a group of men they thought were stealing cables. The pack of angry citizens took the technicians’ bakkie and hurled it over the bridge before setting fire to it. They then tied the four men up and beat them with sticks ̶ till they were dead. The men were legal contractors with legitimate permits. Oops. Ordinary citizens can’t tell the sheriffs and the bandits apart anymore.
Ekurhuleni loses more than R1 billion per year on ‘unaccounted for’ electricity This includes bypassed meters, illegal connections or people whose electricity isn’t metered. Germiston, where I live, is the area with the most informal settlements and backyard dwellings in the Metro. My suburb, which used to be a traditional family home area, inches ever closer to the informal electricity supply system we see in townships, as more and more people move here to tap into the promise of a better lifestyle. Upgrading of the infrastructure is not budgeted for. ‘We spend only 4.3% of capital value on maintenance,’ says a local councillor. ‘It should be 8%. We have a R37 Billion CAPEX backlog in expenditure in Ekurhuleni. Of identified needs, we only have ±R3 billion to spend each year. There simply is not enough money.’
Cash flow is dire
According to a DA publicity pamphlet, Ekurhuleni’s cash flow is dire. We only have four hours of cash left to run the Metro. We owe Eskom R254 million and outsourced contractors R2.5 billion.
Off the balance sheet and on the street, the value of the lost electricity is incalculable. Cable contractors are making their money by stealing the cables and then selling them back to the council in the form of contracts or as spares to needy communities. There is a growing tension between resident vigilante groups, organised electricity syndicates and ineffective, corrupt local governance.
In the midst of this, a local councillor asks us to sign a petition against illegal connections. We do not seem to get the message across: ‘The time for paper protests is over, lady; we are hurling bakkies over bridges now.’
All is quiet on the Eastern front in my area at the moment. It is summer, so people are in good spirits and enjoy life. We hang our washing outside and sit in the sun during load shedding. There is not such a pressing need for geysers, tumble dryers and heaters. But there will be another winter next year – plus an election. Rumours about burgeoning third forces abound.
Citizens will turn to the closest solution, and it might not be local law enforcement or CPF structures, who are so overwhelmed with the most extensive criminal network they have ever encountered that they are paralyzed.
Makeshift marshals
My local councillor simply deletes messages on her WhatsApp group alerting them to the situation, and refuses to get involved. Ratepayer-type associations are developing a patronage system with the energy department that is only more official than my street’s solution by veneer. Private security companies are fulfilling a curious new position as makeshift marshals. They are becoming the first port of call if you suspect illegal activity, and are the only ones who will patrol your streets and protect your infrastructure – if you can get enough people to sign up.
Loose affiliations with former members of the military are forming, as people expect the pressure cooker to heat up and power blocs vie for votes. ‘I can get five to six private armed reaction units together very quickly. We are ready,’ one man told me.
Bubble-bubble, toil and trouble. They patrol at night. They will guard what is theirs.
And all the while the electricity is coursing through our suburbs and townships like a precious metal, waiting to be mined.
New-age Zama Zamas
The new-age Zama Zamas now operate above ground, extracting value from a national asset that should be the lifeblood of the country but is becoming the symbol of a dying heartbeat. People like me who live in the area hedge our bets: I pay my taxes, my fees and my fealties. Fight, flight or make friends – do all three.
Elections are coming; you gotta ask yourself: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do you?
Welcome to the wild, wild East.
[Image: Jonas Frey on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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