Is Ramaphosa’s house exempt from load shedding? Councillor says yes, City Power says no

While many continue to bear the brunt of load shedding, there is some chatter which suggests that some are spared the never-ending power outages plaguing our lives.

Most prominent among these is apparently the first citizen, President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose Hyde Park home is among those that are apparently exempt from load shedding.

According to DA Ward 90 councillor in the City of Johannesburg, Martin Williams, the entire block on which the president’s Hyde Park home stands has been completely passed over whenever the rest of Joburg is hit with blackouts.

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The ward in question, comprises 12 suburbs, which include Sandhurst and Hydepark.

“It was in 2018 when I became aware of this through a friend,” Williams, who is the councillor for Hyde Park and other areas, told The Citizen.

And though he says he is not opposed to the president being spared the brunt of the blackouts which have become the bane of ordinary South Africans’ existence, Williams does question why the same concession can’t be made for critical institutions like hospitals, who are often dependent on their own backup power solutions.

“I am not saying there it is wrong for the President to be exempt. In fact I feel he (Ramaphosa) has a vital role to play in society, which among others include keeping the nation informed about everything that is happening in the country, hence I say, he cannot be constrained to the electricity outages,” Williams said.

Several callers and social media users on Friday morning also reacted to 702‘s breakfast show host Clement Manyathela’s questions regarding the matter, with some confirming that they have also heard murmurings of this specific section Hyde Park never being load shed. Some claimed to have experienced it for themselves.

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When asked for confirmation of whether the president is really spared from blackouts, Eskom’s spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the only areas exempt from load shedding are those the power utility has identified as “essential loads”.

“These are areas which feed off the same power line that supplies coal to Eskom, which is essential to keep the generation system going. If you cut electricity supply to that mine, you are cutting coal supply to a power station.

“Places such as hospitals are ‘critical loads’, whose supply has to be maintained in preference to others. These critical loads are required to have a back-up system with their local electricity supplier, like a municipality as critical loads,” Mantshantsha said.

He added that key points like the Union Buildings and Parliament are also considered part of Eskom’s “essential load” and stressed that, no private nor individual households are included.

The office of the President could also not confirm or deny the claims, but instead referred The Citizen to the City of Johannesburg’s City Power, who flatly denied this.

“There is no person or institution within City Power supply areas that is exempted from load shedding. This includes the President, Premier, or our Mayor,” said City Power spokesperson, Isaac Mangena.

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Further denying what he termed as “rumours”, Mangena offered what might be an explanation for those who have experienced no load shedding in the ward in question in recent week.

He said City Power recently encountered a problem with a circuit breaker at the Delta Substation, owing to load shedding.

As a result, the breaker in question could not be immediately repaired, which resulted in a prolonged outage affecting areas such as Rosebank and Hydepark.

“When we eventually repaired the breaker and restored power, we then decided that because customers feeding from the Rosebank substation endured days of outages, we should then exclude them from load shedding.

“That went on for about a week, so for the past two weeks, we have been load shedding the area,” Mangena added.

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stephent@citizen.co.za