Municipal teams were deployed to repair a crucial power line running through Gqeberha’s Buxton Avenue power kiosk after the line was damaged in late August, leaving thousands of Gqeberha residents without electricity. The matter was under investigation to establish whether the incident was caused by cable theft or sabotage, amid labour disputes in the city’s electricity and energy department. (Photo: Riaan Marais) 
A section of copper electricity wires, worth no more than R100 to anyone on the street, was stripped from a crucial electricity kiosk in Kensington on Sunday morning, leaving several Nelson Mandela Bay suburbs without power.
Municipal teams were on site for most of Sunday, and electricity supply was restored to some affected areas.
The large-scale power outage comes only weeks after ongoing disputes between workers and management in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s electricity and energy department. Thirteen workers were threatened with suspension after forcing acting executive director Tholi Biyela from his office.
Standing on site, overseeing repairs at the kiosk in Buxton Avenue, Biyela said the municipality could not rule out anything. An investigation would be undertaken to establish the motive behind the vandalism of the power line.
Once the investigation has provided more clarity, the municipality would consider laying criminal charges.
Acting city manager Ted Pillay also visited the site.
“At this stage, we cannot say for sure who is behind this incident. From looking at the damage to the cables, however, it would appear that whoever cut the lines has knowledge of the equipment and the system,” Biyela said.
He explained that the 66kV line runs from the Ditchling substation in Algoa Park, through Kensington, and into the Mount Road substation behind the Munelek building that feeds power to large parts of Central Gqeberha and surrounds.
“This is quite a significant kiosk as it sits on top of this crucial power line. We received the first notification that the line had been tampered with around 3.30am on Sunday. One transformer had tripped, but the backup line was still operational and power was not disrupted.
“About 30 minutes later, we received a second notification that the other cable had also been cut and the line to the Mount Road substation was down.”
This led to outages in North End, South End, Kensington, Central, Mount Road, Walmer, the harbour area and parts of Newton Park.
The piece of cable removed was about a metre of copper wire, enclosed in oil-filled insulation. Biyela said a cable thief would get little more than R100 from a scrap dealer.
For the teams handling the repairs, the first priority was to restore stable power to crucial facilities, such as hospitals, within the affected region. “While power has been restored to certain areas, we unfortunately do not have a timeline for when supply will be fully restored. Some areas are still affected and should come back online as repairs progress,” Biyela said.
At 7pm, the municipality issued a statement saying repairs on one of the affected lines had been completed and they were testing the system for “stability and safety”.
Municipal services were further affected as the power outage rendered the official call centre offline, meaning water leaks and other service delivery queries could not be submitted telephonically.
Sunday’s power outage comes after weeks of back-and-forth between the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) and senior city officials. Earlier this month, municipal employees forcibly removed Biyela from his office, resulting in 13 people receiving letters of “intention to suspend” them for their conduct.
In these letters, they were accused of threatening Biyela and disrupting the operations of the municipality’s electricity department. It was stated that their continued presence posed a threat to the wellbeing of other employees, as well as the stability of the department.
In turn, Samwu regional secretary Siphokazi Lobishe addressed a letter to Pillay, wherein she requested that Biyela be removed from his position as acting executive director. She accused Biyela of bullying and intimidating staff, abusing his power and “union bashing”.
The electricity and energy department has been plagued with problems over the past few months, with six officials accused of ordering R10-million in copper cables without authorisation in January this year.
Read more: Nelson Mandela Bay metro takes steps against six officials over R10m copper cable scandal
Last week, hundreds of Samwu members protested outside the Gqeberha city hall and threatened to down tools in solidarity with the 13 members who received suspension letters if Pillay did not intervene.
The acting city manager proposed the withdrawal of the suspension notices, to be replaced with final written warnings. The union rejected the proposal.
DA mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay for the upcoming local government elections Retief Odendaal said on Sunday, “We all know that an act of vandalism has damaged the Mount Road Substation in the early hours of this morning. The result has been an extended electricity outage because of the complicated repair work needed to reinstate supply.”
He said some progress “was made this afternoon with some areas being reinstated – these have since gone offline again because the supply was unstable”.
“The good news is that I can confirm that the repair work to the cables has been completed. The bad news is that the officials are currently busy with the tedious process of slowly pumping oil back into the 4km electricity cable.
“This takes quite a bit of time and can’t be speeded up. As frustrating as it may be, there is currently no time frame for restoration of supply.” DM