Imagine having to fold your school uniform and placing it under a mattress you are going to sleep on at night so that your weight presses on it and make it wrinkle-free. All this admin because you haven’t had electricity for weeks and this has become your new normal. This is what some of the children in some parts of Diepkloof had to go through to look presentable and neat in their school uniform. Just when they thought the nightmare was over, power utility, Eskom introduced load shedding.
We interviewed children at Rena Le Lona Creative Centre for Children which is also a healing centre for orphans and vulnerable children.
15-year-old Andile Shongwe is one of the children who say the electricity crisis has affected them negatively. “The issue of electricity is really a nuisance, especially when it comes to us learners. When we did not have electricity for weeks, we had to look for alternative ways to study, iron our clothes and cook. Sometimes I’d find myself using my phone torch as a source of light so that I can be able to study. Ironing! We’d go iron at friends’ homes, even worse, we’d find ourselves using the mattress technique,” Shongwe said.
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10-year-old Bontle Mosehla said although she loved the fact that she spent time at her friend’s home, the issue of electricity is an inconvenience. “When we did not have electricity for weeks, I went to my friend’s house to iron, do homework and charge all our phones. I enjoyed spending time with my friend, but that doesn’t mean I was okay with the issue of electricity.
“Some mornings I bathed with cold water and I am one of the people who have tried the trick of ironing using a bed mattress. Loadshedding is also an inconvenience because sometimes you wake up to get ready for school only to find that there is no electricity. What now? Definitely a cold bath because there won’t be time to make fire otherwise you will be late for school,” Mosehla said.
“For the 16-year-old Katlego Ndlovu, cooking and getting hot water was not an issue as they still own a coal stove at her home. However, it seems we have an environmentalist here, Ndlovu is worried about the damage these coals are causing to the environment.
“I never had an issue with cooking and getting hot water because we still own one of those vintage coal stoves. But my issue is that smoke from house chimneys can lead to unpleasant odours in the neighbourhood and be harmful to our health. My main issue was studying, I would also charge my phone at a friend’s house and use my phone’s torch as a source of light and when the battery gets low, it is game over for me,” said Ndlovu.
Ndlovu’s other concern was that sometimes she felt that people needed privacy in their homes. Well, 13-year-old Mzwakhe Nkosi shares her sentiments and he says, because of that, he has never even attempted to go to anyone’s home to access electricity.
“My friend did not have electricity as well, so I never used to go to anyone’s home for studying, I felt like it would be disturbing family time so I would just study at home using candles. Bathing with cold water is no fun and sometimes you’re forced to take a cold bath because finding firewood was a hassle,” Nkosi said.
While these outages may discourage these children, Rena Le Lona’s centre manager Mlungisi Mvelase said the centre’s role is to give them hope and heal them. They do so through arts, be it drama, music or poetry.
Eskom says that load shedding is a controlled way and legal requirement to make sure that the national power system remains stable in case of major incidents. It is done to avoid a total countrywide blackout. However, with regards to prolonged outages in parts of Soweto, the power utility says it’s due to illegal connections and meter bypassing.
“In most parts of Soweto when people have prolonged power outages, it is not because Eskom has cut them off. It is those areas where there is failed infrastructure, either the mini-substation or transformer blew up or it failed due to overloading of the network. This is caused by meter bypassing and tempering as well as illegal connections and buying electricity from ghost vendors. We recently announced that we have a shortage of mini-subs and we are working with manufacturers to make those materials available for us so that we can be able to restore supply,” says Tumi Mashinini Eskom’s spokesperson.
“We are in a process of restoring power, but before we do that, we are going to do our audits, remove all illegal connections, issue fines to those who connected illegally and after people have paid, we will then replace the mini-subs and transformers,” Mashinini added.
Soweto owes the power utility billions of Rands hence the introduction of prepaid meters.
-The children have suggested a fixed amount that everyone can afford to solve these problems.
-The introduction of solar system, however, they also mentioned that these could be easily stolen and thus, there should be security.
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