A power outage hit Van Dyk Park in Boksburg for an entire day on October 19. Mpho Sithole, a 29-year-old who runs a business that sells eggs and meat, felt the direct impact of the outage.
Cable theft and vandalism continue to place pressure on electricity infrastructure, affecting business operations, security, deliveries and daily income.
Sithole stores meat in a refrigerator for customers who have placed orders. When cables are stolen overnight, he is forced to wait long hours for the power to be restored, putting perishable stock at risk.
“As a business owner that sells meat, I am very much affected because they steal this cable late at night around midnight, and when we wake up there’s no electricity, then I have to keep the meat that people ordered in the refrigerator for hours until cables are fixed,” Sithole said.
The repeated disruptions leave him concerned about lost stock, customer orders and income.
For small businesses operating on tight margins, spoiled meat can mean losses that are difficult to recover. Unlike larger companies, small traders may have limited resources to invest in backup power or replace damaged stock.
His experience shows how infrastructure theft can threaten livelihoods, not simply cause inconvenience.
During an electricity engagement with residents and businesses in Honeydew and Ruimsig in September, City Power acting chief executive Charles Tlouane addressed the impact of theft and vandalism on the utility’s finances.
“Theft and vandalism place a significant financial burden on City Power and divert funds that could be used for maintenance and upgrades,” the city said.
City Power is replacing copper cables with aluminium, which is less attractive to thieves, while introducing technology to monitor the network and detect outages. Residents and businesses have also been urged to report suspicious activity and damage to electricity infrastructure.
City Power noted billions of rands in non-technical electricity losses totaling R3.96 billion in recent annual reports due to theft, meter tampering, and illegal connections—while direct vandalism and recurrent attacks on critical nodes cost the city tens of millions in emergency repairs and security overhead.
Beyond direct municipal expenditures, the vandalism operations trigger widespread, prolonged blackouts that inflict heavy indirect losses on local businesses and property owners, who are forced to absorb high expenses for diesel generators, security upgrades, and lost productivity.
Industrial businesses also affected
In Kya Sand, Johannesburg, Natasha Baboophilall, business manager at Africa Trade Platform, said an outage lasting more than two weeks affected the company and other businesses in the area. She reported that the loss of electricity left the company’s electric fence inoperable, raising concerns about break-ins and equipment theft.
She also called for greater security visibility to help prevent illegal connections and further damage to electricity infrastructure.
Her account highlights how outages can affect more than production. Businesses relying on powered security systems may face additional risks when electricity supplies are interrupted.
The experiences in Boksburg and Kya Sand underline the need for prevention alongside repairs. Restoring electricity is essential, but repeated cable theft can expose businesses to recurring losses and uncertainty.
City Power’s challenge is to protect infrastructure, respond quickly to outages and demonstrate whether cable-replacement and monitoring measures are reducing repeat incidents.
