By Zukile Majova
Political Editor
In a space of seven days the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg North received a 15-hour water cut warning, a 36-hour power cut and an 18-hour blackout.
The City of Johannesburg, which is struggling to guarantee safe, clean drinking water to many communities in lower-end settlements, has also been shedding water supply in rich suburbs.
Some communities have not had a constant flow of piped water for two months.
On Wednesday night last week the residents of Craighall, Craighall Park, Linden and Blairgowrie lost power at 10pm. It wasn’t restored until Friday afternoon.
What City Power called a “fault location” and the fixing process took 36 hours and it happened again on Wednesday this week, lasting 18 hours.
This time the residents lost it. They waged a massive protest via WhatsApp and phone calls to City Power followed by a flood of emails logging complaints to the Customer Service Centre.
Property owners called on tenants who were renting in residential flats to individually log more complaints to City Power using their meter numbers.
This was fascinating for me because where I come from, KwaBhaca in the Eastern Cape, we don’t protest because we know; nobody cares.
This suburban strategy is also far removed from strategy in black townships where people collect old tyres, burn them and block the roads with big rocks and heavy branches of trees.
From the language in the WhatsApp group, the residents were mad as hell. Some complained about food in their fridges getting off.
My biggest frustration started three hours after the power cut when my small Gizzu wi-fi backup battery ran out of juice. It is often enough to cover the normal two-hour load shedding that has become a norm in SA.
I have a bigger back-up battery in case of Stage 4 and Stage 6.
Obviously nothing to contend with a 36-hour blackout.
As the digital bombardment and frustration of the madams continued, my thoughts went out to residents of Diepsloot who hit the streets everyday, burning tyres and blocking the roads.
All falling on deaf ears.
And now that the crumbling infrastructure, power maintenance of electricity substations, water pipelines and cable theft have reached the top middle-class homes; how long will it take for the silent protest to blow out into street protests?
I have lived for 30 years in ANC-run towns, I have seen worse. Unfortunately my neighbours in Craighall Park still believe the texts, the emails and phone calls will be received by a caring government.
For I smile a bit knowing that for the first time they will understand why the townships are burning.
