Chaos after electricians’ strike

2024 started on the wrong foot for service delivery when an unprotected strike by municipal electricians left residents in various areas in the dark for over a week.

“Our electricity went off just after 18:00 on Tuesday (9 January), and no one could tell us why”.

These are the words of a resident of Khutsong Extension 4 who, like many others, was suddenly stuck without electricity. Some also had problems with their water supply.

Residents of Welverdiend, Khutsong Extension 4 and 5, and the thousands of people now living in the Elijah Barayi mega housing complex near Welverdiend were affected. Unfortunately, they were not the only ones left in the dark. From 11 January, residents of some areas of Carletonville, like those on Zinc, Bornite and a part of Kaolin Street, were also without power.
Problems with the electricity supply to the part of Fochville near the traffic department also started occurring on the same day, while Kokosi was affected since the weekend.

The first official communication residents of the Welverdiend area and the Khutsong South extensions got from the Merafong Cty Local Municipality to shed light on the problem was a notice from the municipal manager, Mr Dumisani Mabuza, on 11 January.

He addressed t to employees at the electrical and water sections, who, according to him, were embarking on an “unlawful and unprotected wildcat strike”.

They were instructed to return to work by 13:30 that day and were threatened with dismissal if they did not comply. The employees were allegedly striking over a shortage of protective equipment.

Almost immediately after the notice, a large part of Welverdiend and Elijah Barayi’s electricity was switched back on. However, streets and areas where cable theft had occurred during the outage, were still stuck without electricity by printing time.

Rumours that the employees were back at work but on some slow strike continued. As a result, they ignored the new issues that had come up. The ongoing problems led to widespread protests by residents from various areas. Although residents of Khutsong Extension 5, some from Welverdiend and others from Elijah Barayi, started protesting on 10 January, the protests had spread to Fochville and Kokosi by the next day.
Protesters blocked the road between Carletonville and Welverdiend for at least some hours on most working days last week, while the entrance to Fochville from the Kokosi side was also blocked on several days.

By printing time, the municipality had still not responded to questions about when the municipality would sort the problems out and how it would handle the striking workers