Eskom circuit box explosion leaves Limpopo woman homeless

A struggling 25-year-old woman has become the latest victim of load shedding after the mud hut she inherited three years ago from her late mother was razed by a post-blackout fire in a Limpopo village this week.

Khuthadzo Mbedzi, from Tshaulu Tshitumbe village in Vhembe district, lost everything, including her matric certificate, identity document, clothes, food and school books belonging to her daughter and younger brother.

Circuit box explosion

A circuit box exploded and set her traditional rondavel mud house alight after a power surge when the electricity returned after load shedding. Nobody was injured in the blaze and the charred remains of the mud structure remained.

The family had been surviving on her mother’s pension grant but following her death, the family had struggled to make ends meet.

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“I have nothing left. I am just by myself, my daughter and my brother,” Mbedzi said.

“We don’t know where to stay or what to eat after this fire. We rely on the mercy of some relatives and neighbours who came forward to provide us some assistance. But that will not last forever.”

Eskom must attend to matter

Now, the community is planning to protest outside the office of Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa in Pretoria, and at Eskom’s Megawatt Park headquarters in Johannesburg. They are threatening to take the power utility and the minister to court for the damage.

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“Ms Khuthadzo Mbedzi’s situation is very painful because she doesn’t have any source of income,” said Phumudzo Mukhwathi, chair of the People’s Liberation (PL), a civil society watchdog for people affected by poor service delivery from the state.

“Ms Mbedzi doesn’t have a place to stay; she needs a shelter urgently. We blame government ofcials for corruption that caused this load shedding.

“The government must allocate houses to poor people like her, not to their friends and families.

“As the PL, we call on Ramokgopa [and] Eskom management to attend to the country’s electricity crisis as matter of urgency. The current situation faced by Ms Mbedzi, who lost her rondavel traditional hut, is caused by Eskom because it is a suspected electric box failure due to Eskom load shedding.

“We are calling upon the minister of electricity, office of [the] president of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa [and] Eskom management to attend [to] the crisis urgently because it is affecting the poor of the poorest [communities], mostly in rural areas.

“Our organisation is very concerned that there are families who are starving due to load shedding and the high interest rate, which has caused food prices to increase.

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“The government must stop increasing the repo rate because it is affecting prices,” he said.

Should the government fail to attend to the matter “we are going to embark on a protest at Eskom and the minister’s office, otherwise we will take them to court”, said Mukhwathi.