Kliptown residents face longer blackout after City Power pulls out
JOHANNESBURG — Residents in parts of Kliptown and Pimville face a longer wait for electricity after City Power withdrew technicians from the area, saying protests and intimidation had made it too dangerous for workers to continue repairing a faulty cable.
The withdrawal affects restoration work for the Kliptown Golf Course area and Pimville Zone 9 in Soweto, where technical teams had already traced the outage to a faulty cable termination.
City Power said its technicians and a service provider had been deployed to investigate the interruption and had progressed to the point where repairs could begin. The affected cable and termination need to be isolated, assessed and repaired before the network can safely be switched back on. That work has now stopped.
According to the utility, protests and intimidation forced the teams to leave the site before repairs could be completed, meaning residents already affected by the outage will remain without power until workers can safely return.
City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena stressed that withdrawing the teams did not mean the utility was refusing to restore electricity.
“Our teams will be redeployed as soon as safety can be guaranteed,” Mangena said. City Power said it would only be able to provide a reliable restoration estimate once technicians return to the site and complete the necessary assessments.
The incident creates a difficult cycle for affected residents. Communities frustrated by prolonged electricity outages need City Power technicians on the ground to restore supply, but confrontations with those workers can stop the very repairs required to bring electricity back.
It also comes as Johannesburg’s electricity network faces wider pressure from deteriorating infrastructure, vandalism, cable theft and financial constraints.
A report released this week by the Centre for Development and Enterprise estimated City Power’s infrastructure backlog at R44.25 billion and said deteriorating and outdated networks were responsible for about 60% of Johannesburg’s power outages. Between July 2025 and March 2026, City Power recorded 2.1 million forced interruptions, according to the report.
At the same time, deliberate interference with electricity infrastructure is making the network more difficult and expensive to maintain.
City Power said this week that its Central Substation had suffered three fires in a month and six fire incidents since January. Four of those six incidents showed elements of cable theft and vandalism, according to the utility.
The Kliptown incident presents a different but related operational problem: technicians cannot repair infrastructure if their own safety cannot be guaranteed.
City Power has previously raised similar concerns in communities affected by illegal connections and infrastructure interference. During recent operations in Tshepisong, the utility warned that employees could not continue working where infrastructure was being sabotaged, illegal reconnections were taking place during repairs and technicians were exposed to unsafe conditions.
For Kliptown and Pimville residents, the immediate consequence is simpler and more frustrating. A fault has been identified and technicians know what needs to be repaired, but there is currently no confirmed time for electricity to return.
City Power says that clock will effectively only start again when conditions on the ground are considered safe enough for its teams to go back.
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