They blocked the streets with burning tyres and stones. Some traffic lights were also destroyed in the mayhem.
Ward 54 councillor Desmond Sabi said: “One of the protests was led by the people who live at the Mshayazafe hostel.
“The cause of the power outages is cables that are being stolen from a power station behind Mpilisweni.
“Some of the sections affected include Basothong, Phenduka and Thintwa.”
According to Sabi, there are two types of settlement in Thokoza, the informal and the formal settlements.
Residents in the informal settlements are protesting because the metro wants to cut off the illegal connections, while residents from the formal settlements are protesting because they will also be affected by the disconnection.
“As Ward 54 we have had three protests since the beginning of winter and after the financial year, we found that only 15 per cent of the households paid their rates and taxes. People don’t pay.”
Sputla Modise, the ANC chairperson of Ward 56, said: “The power outages affect us as the community very badly. We spoke to the metro and we were told that they are currently busy with audits as they want to check how many residents have illegal connections.
“Illegal connections affect the whole community as everyone has to stay in darkness.
“Power outages are rare in some sections such as Thokoza Gardens, but in other sections residents haven’t had electricity for five days.
“As an organisation we are trying very hard to push the metro to fix this issue as the community turns against us, especially now because we have just passed the election season.”
A resident of Thokoza, Nthabiseng Motaung, said, “I support the protest, but I do not understand why people should remove traffic lights while protesting.
“The metro will have to spend a lot of money to fix the traffic lights and I know for sure that the very same people who destroyed the lights will be the ones who will be protesting for them to be fixed.”
The metro failed to respond to our enquiries by the time of publication.
