Nersa called to account for municipal electricity distribution failure

A court application triggered by poor electricity distribution by the Rustenburg local municipality is the first of its kind in a new legal strategy by civil rights movement AfriForum to assist the increasing number of communities suffering regular power outages over and above load shedding.

AfriForum wants to put pressure on energy regulator Nersa to hold municipal electricity distributors to account. Nersa is the legally mandated issuer of distribution licences and must see to it that its licencees adhere to the conditions attached to such licences, says AfriForum local government advisor Petrus Coetzee.

The organisation submitted the first application to the Gauteng division of the High Court late last year.

It is asking the court to compel Nersa to take steps against the Rustenburg municipality for failing to adhere to its licence conditions.

The municipality itself and its municipal manager are also respondents in the matter.

“Many similar applications will follow,” says Coetzee.

Licence conditions

The licence conditions typically require a licencee to provide a 24/7 telephonic service for residents to report faults.

In Rustenburg, residents call, but the phone never gets answered, says Coetzee in an affidavit to the court. It is a huge problem, especially after hours and over weekends.

Dawie Conradie, chair of AfriForum’s Rustenburg branch, confirms this: “You can call 50 times before someone picks up the phone in the call centre.”

Recently the call centre suffered a power outage when the town’s 33kV ring feed was damaged – as often happens.

“To add insult to injury, the call centre is on the same premises as the fire brigade’s control room,” says Conradie.

“If there is a power failure on the premises, both are offline and the generator they have for back-up does not work.”

The licence conditions further require that 98% of all power failures (as opposed to load shedding) be resolved within 7.5 hours. “I don’t think they even achieve 20%,” says Conradie.

“The 33kV ring feed blew twice in December and then half of the town is left in the dark for 36-48 hours.”

Retirement home pays for parts

He says the municipality has neither the necessary spares to do the repairs nor the money to buy what is needed. Often residents cough up out of desperation.

In one such instance, Hugo Otterman, chair of the Altkroondal retirement home, says they paid R12 500 for a stream breaker that blew. “We’ll wait three years for the municipality to do it,” he says.

Otterman says the retirement home cannot be left without electricity. They must prepare warm meals for the 112 residents, and wash and dry their laundry.

They must also, at all costs, avoid an elderly person walking around with a lit candle.

“The risk is too big,” he says.

Mitigating against both load shedding and municipal distribution failures costs the retirement home a fortune every month and their equipment simply does not last.

No power, no water

Hennie van der Wath, who lives on a smallholding in the Waagfontein area, says he and his neighbours are completely dependent on borehole water. The pumps don’t work when there is a power failure, which leaves them without water.

Sometimes only one or two phases of the three-phase supply are live, and the supply is not strong enough to drive the pumps, a fridge, geyser or washing machine. Then they have no choice but to run generators, which costs them a fortune.

Streetlights and the ripple control system, which enables the municipality to switch off geysers remotely in lieu of load shedding, are out of order due to a broken computer system.

Since asking nicely doesn’t help …

The court case has been a long time coming. “We’ve been fighting since 2021,” says Conradie.

AfriForum has been trying to engage the municipality and, later also Nersa, but there was little response, and the problems persist.

As a result, AfriForum has now approached the court to address the Rustenburg issue and will follow the same strategy to address similar problems in other municipalities.

The organisation audits their compliance with the relevant distributor’s licence conditions, and if there is non-compliance, as is the case in most municipalities countrywide, it engages the municipality to try and get it resolved.

If there is no response, it lays a complaint with Nersa, and if the regulator fails to respond, it approaches the court.

Its goal is to force municipalities to adhere to the minimum standards of service delivery as prescribed in their licence conditions.

Read:
Cape Town seeks to take over electricity supply from Eskom
Western Cape wants to pool municipal buying power

If this does not work, they expect Nersa to take away their distribution licences and give them to other entities that are capable of delivering the services.

“We have seen huge successes where licences have been given to other organisations,” says Coetzee.