While power has been restored in Finsbury and the rest of the plots in Randfontein, residents, and businesses are still feeling the after-effects of not having power for more than a month and are made to pick up the pieces of their lives and of their businesses.
This became evident in conversations the Herald had with local business people in the different communities to find out how they had been affected by this and get a sense of what the way forward looks like for them.
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Ten Acres resident Amelda le Roux said her story is bleak and has since left her flat broke and without any crops, to say the least.
Le Roux owns a 4.5-hectare farm in Ten Acres and makes a living by planting different kinds of vegetables and selling them at different markets.
On average, she used to make a minimum of R50 000 a month in income, which has all since gone down the drain.
This is because she is left with an empty farm, where the crops she planted were simply not growing, due to the lack of water.
We as the farming community utilise borehole water, which relies on electricity to get pumped. What this means is that without electricity, we simply do not have water and that’s the situation we were faced with for more than a month.
This crippled our businesses because I for one couldn’t even water my crops and everything has died since then,” said Le Roux.
She added that while electricity is back, she together with scores of other business people in the area have to continue to make ends meet for their families.
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This is proving to be a difficult task because according to her, she doubts she will be able to recover from this blow.
She said she had to even sell her livestock, just to get by.
“I had more than 10 pigs and more than 10 goats on my farm and I had to decide to sell them even when I wasn’t planning to. This is because I had no income during that period, and I had to eat and also had salaries to pay. This had a devastating effect on my business and my employees as well.
As it stands, I only have two people working for me. I don’t think I will even be able to take on the seasonal workers that I usually do,” said Le Roux who added that on average, she would hire a minimum of 10 people to assist at the farm at different seasons of the year.
According to her, this is now her reality and is uncertain of what the future of her business looks like.
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