Police have warned that it becomes harder to do their work during power cuts in South Africa and even they are at risk of becoming targets of criminals who are making the most of electricity outages.

This emerged in Parliament on Wednesday, 22 February, during a virtual police committee meeting, which was ironically affected by power cuts.

Part of the meeting dealt with the crisis at state power utility Eskom that has resulted in routine hours-long electricity outages across the country.

#POWERALERT2

Due to the breakdowns of eight generation units on Sunday afternoon, Stage 6 loadshedding will be implemented continuously until further notice. pic.twitter.com/57F78z93IO

— Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) February 19, 2023

‘Unacceptable new norm’

During proceedings some members of the police committee said they were expecting power cuts where they were based — this affected their wifi and internet connections and some, therefore, had trouble remaining logged into the virtual meeting.

This caused some delays.

At one point Police Minister Bheki Cele remarked that he hoped “load shedding doesn’t impact” him and cause him to inadvertently drop out of the meeting.

Deputy Police Minister Cassel Mathale remarked that “load shedding has disorganised many”.

Police committee chairperson Tina Joemat-Pettersson experienced a power outage and before apparently dropping out of the meeting, explained that she was trying to keep up with proceedings despite the situation.

“Unfortunately, this is the new norm,” she said.

“It’s unacceptable.”

Earlier Joemat-Pettersson said that the police committee would have to investigate whether convening virtually at irregular hours would be more convenient, given power cuts.

Power cuts are crime opportunities

During Wednesday’s meeting, the South African Police Service (SAPS) gave a presentation about the impact of power cuts on its operations.

It said: “Load shedding is creating an opportunity for crime to be committed and impacts negatively on routine policing activities.”

Opportunistic criminals were taking advantage of power cuts.

The presentation also detailed the “socio-economic impact” of the crisis. 

It said power cuts were affecting how police officers were attending to complaints and how long it was taking them to respond.

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Another flagged problem brought on by power cuts was “the safety of members that could be easily targeted and robbed of official firearms, attac[k]ed/murdered.”

Dropped calls and delays

The 10111 emergency call centres — that Daily Maverick previously reported on were understaffed with millions of calls dropped over three years — were further impacted by electricity outages.

On top of that, the SAPS presentation said, “calls that are made directly to the police stations are dropped, due to network failure.”

National police commissioner Fannie Masemola during the meeting confirmed that power cuts were affecting the public’s ability to contact cops, and he said there was a plan to resource all police stations with cellphone numbers.

Power cuts also meant that in some cases, there were delays in printing various forms and photocopying documents.

The SAPS presentation said another effective delay was a “back-log in the registration of new cases reported and the assigning of case dockets to investigating officers.”

Some ‘powerless’ police stations

It said of 289 police stations, 26 did not have generators.

Twenty of these were in the Eastern Cape, three were in Mpumalanga, two in the Northern Cape and one in the North West.

Two police stations in KwaZulu-Natal needed generator replacements — these would be dealt with when the relevant contract was awarded in April.

“Load shedding demands are causing a higher rate of generator failure, due to over-utilisation, which then requires additional secondary back-up power supply, in [the] form of battery inverters,” the SAPS presentation said.

Another part of it focused on another issue that was hampering crimefighting — police corruption.

“Police officers who are suspected of committing crimes are disciplined in accordance with SAPS disciplinary regulations,” the presentation said.

In the last three months of 2022, 228 police officers were reported to have committed crimes.

Of those, 222 cases were finalised and six were still pending.

The 222 concluded cases resulted in 211 “sanctions short of dismissal,” five dismissals, three resignations and three officers being found not guilty.

Potentially ‘catastrophic’ corruption

Meanwhile, Eskom made a presentation to the public enterprises committee on Wednesday.

It showed that aside from theft and vandalism, criminality within Eskom was a problem.

“Fraud, corruption, sabotage and other criminal conduct have taken root within Eskom and, unless we take decisive action to eradicate this type of conduct, it will continue to fester and see the downfall of Eskom with catastrophic impacts to South Africa,” the presentation said.

“We will be enforcing our policy of zero tolerance for corruption robustly to eradicate corrupt elements within the organisation and we will take appropriate legal action and apply consequence management as required.”

This article was typed during a two-hour power cut. DM

Caryn Dolley has spent years tracing the footprints of crime/drug kingpins from across the world. In her latest book, Clash of the Cartels, Dolley provides unprecedented insight into how specific drug cartels and syndicates have operated via South Africa, becoming embroiled in deadly violence in the country and bolstering local criminal networks. Available now from the Daily Maverick Shop.