Garden Route residents furious over 16-day blackout due to cable theft
Many residents had entered their 16th day without reliable electricity or water after repeated incidents of cable theft.
Image: Shayne Robinson
Garden Route residents are experiencing a prolonged blackout, now entering its 16th day, due to ongoing cable theft. The lack of electricity and water has forced many to discard spoiled food and left homes in darkness.
This crisis follows severe weather earlier this month that affected towns along the south-eastern coast of the Western Cape, including the Crags, Plettenberg Bay, Sedgefield, and parts of George.
By Thursday afternoon, many residents had entered their 16th day without reliable electricity or water after repeated incidents of cable theft.
This follows freak weather earlier this month that battered towns along the south-eastern coast of the Western Cape, including the Crags, Plettenberg Bay, Sedgefield, and parts of George.
The severe weather has claimed at least 11 lives across the province, with deaths linked to flooding, fallen trees, and other storm-related incidents
Eskom spokesperson Kyle Cookson said technicians had been working around the clock to restore electricity supply to customers in the Garden Route.
He said while electricity had been restored in some areas, places such as the Crags were still without power due to cable theft and vandalism.
“It is the second such incident in less than two weeks,” Cookson said.
“At this stage, the estimated time for electricity restoration remains unavailable.”
And as the blackout and water outages drags on, businesses said they were bleeding money and battling to keep their doors open.
This while residents said they were struggling to cook as paraffin and gas prices continued to climb, forcing many to scrape together whatever they could to put a warm meal on the table, while others found themselves trapped behind electric gates and garage doors.
While some residents said they would turn to insurance companies in an attempt to recover losses caused by power surges, including damaged appliances, experts warned such claims would only be paid out if they had the correct insurance cover.
Anne Laires, who owns a dairy farm, farm stall, bakery, restaurant and accommodation business in the Crags, said the outages have affected every aspect of her operation.
“We are an agricultural dairy operation, so it affects everything,” Laires, of Natures Way, said.
“We milk cows, so we need generators to be able to milk the cows and keep the milk cold.
“We also have a farm stall, bakery and restaurant, so we need generators to operate and keep all stock and produce cold.”
She said the cost of keeping generators running was immense and understandably so against the backdrop of soaring fuel prices.
Wholesale diesel prices in SA surged past R30 a litre in May after one of the sharpest fuel price increases in recent years.
“The generator costs more than R4,000 a day to keep running,” Laires said.
“Obviously, it fluctuates depending on whether we’re pasteurising milk, how much we’re baking and so on.”
Laires said cable theft had become the biggest obstacle to restoring power.
Mercy Moabelo, of Bossiesgif, said she needed to fetch water from her employer in town and borrow a gas stove from a colleague just to cook dinner for her family.
“My food went off in the fridge,” the 41-year-old said.
“I need to use gas to cook, I don’t have any power.”
She said she was looking after a household of five, including two children under the age of 10.
Guesthouse owner Colleen Noble said the outages had cost her significant business revenue after wedding guests were forced to leave her establishment.
Noble said the lack of electricity also meant a lack of water because her property relied on pumps connected to rainwater tanks.
Alvin Witten, owner of Love Road Travel, said small businesses in the area were battling to survive.
Witten said outages had also affected residents personally, with many losing food stored in freezers.
According to Witten, many communities were relying more on neighbours than on municipal assistance.
“We have people who own generators and they have been offering others the opportunity to charge phones and things like that,” he said.
He said the outages were having a severe knock-on effect on workers and local projects.
Witten also said communication infrastructure failures had worsened the situation for businesses and residents.
He claimed some areas in Sedgefield were still without water after two weeks.
Ben Theunissen, of Ben Theunissen Brokers, said many insurance companies no longer automatically cover damage caused by power surges and load shedding unless clients have taken out optional cover.
He said insurers had increasingly moved such claims under optional “accidental damage” and “power surge” cover.
He said the claims process itself was usually not difficult if the correct cover was in place.
The Bitou municipality, which oversees towns such as Plettenberg Bay, said: "The municipality acknowledges the frustration and hardship experienced by affected residents, businesses, and communities during this prolonged outage period.
Thando Matika, mayor of Knysna municipality, which oversees Sedgefield, said water shortages remained a major issue and teams were working around the clock to resolve the problem.
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