City and Eskom dither while families bury their children
Peter Luhanga
- Six-year-old electrocuted in Dunoon as community pleas for electrification go unanswered
- Residents of Ekupholeni say they have begged for safe electricity for years. Officials say red tape stands in the way.
- Community leaders demand safe electricity before more lives are lost.
The joy of buying ice cream turned to horror when a six-year-old was fatally electrocuted after touching a live metal burglar bar at the entrance of a family tuck shop in Ekupholeni informal settlement, Dunoon, on Wednesday 8 October.
Neighbours said they grabbed wooden planks to pull the boy free from the live metal, then rushed him to the Dunoon Community Health Centre, but doctors at the health centre declared him dead on arrival.
In a statement two days later, Eskom General Manager of Distribution for the Cape Coastal Cluster, Mbulelo Yedwa, said: “Eskom received the sad news as it continues to battle the scourge of illegal connections, cable theft, and infrastructure vandalism across the Western Cape.”
Yedwa said most of the illegal connections were in Eskom-supplied areas in the Cape Town metropole.
Ekupholeni informal settlement is situated on what was once a community sports field.
Residents, many of whom could no longer afford to rent backyard shacks or shacks in nearby informal settlements, began occupying the land in 2018 after prolonged confrontations with the City’s anti-land invasion unit.
Since then, many have tapped directly into Eskom power lines, running bare wires into their shacks without circuit breakers or main switches that regulate current.
Ekupholeni community leader Thembelani Ndabezimbi, whose shack is located near where the child was electrocuted, said the boy’s death was the latest in a series of tragedies that have claimed eight lives in the settlement since 2018. Seven of the deaths have been children.
Ndabezimbi said the repeated electrocutions show how the absence of basic services defines life in informal settlements, where poverty and neglect have made daily activities potentially deadly.
The latest tragedy follows the electrocution of an 11-year Unothando Majoka while she was hanging washing on a line in nearby Siyahlala informal settlement in 2022, and of 36-year-old Mpumelelo Ndyoko, who was electrocuted while handling exposed cables.
Despite years of warnings, sprawling webs of illegal connections still hang over Dunoon’s narrow footpaths, the wires strung from pole to shack.
Heroic effort
Ndabezimbi said the death of the six-year-old has left the informal settlement in shock.
He said he was at the shack on Wednesday when residents lifted the child into a car, and the image of the boy’s hair coming loose from his scalp as they tried to save him is one he cannot forget.
He said he thought the child would survive.
“I didn’t believe the child didn’t make it. I hoped he would come back,” said Ndabezimbi.
Landeka Mandla, 45, who lives in the same part of Ekupholeni, was nearby when the boy was electrocuted.
A mother of two grown children, Mandla said she first tried to pull him free with a small stick, but it didn’t work. She cried out for help and found a longer plank which she used to break him free from the live current.
She said since the incident she’d been taking medication to help her sleep. Her voice was heavy with exhaustion as she spoke to Iliso Labantu. Asked to recount what happened, she faltered, then broke down, sobbing.
City meeting
Ndabezimbi has been at the forefront of efforts to secure electricity for the community, writing to city officials and visiting the ward councillor’s office to plead for formal electrification.
He showed Iliso Labantu a series of email exchanges in which City subcouncil 3 manager Roxanne Moses directed the issue to Eskom, while the utility responded that it could supply power if the City authorised access to the land and clarified its official use.
In correspondence seen by Iliso Labantu, following the boy’s death, Moses called an urgent meeting for Friday 10 October at the subcouncil 3 offices in Paddocks, Milnerton.
“This is an urgent meeting for your attendance and input,” she wrote, noting that both Eskom and the City’s Energy Department had already discussed electrification of Ekupholeni earlier this year.
When Iliso Labantu phoned Moses on Monday, she said she was feeling ill and too unwell to talk, saying she was “heavy-headed”.
After being told the reason for the call, she hung up.
Subcouncil chairperson Phindile Maxiti said no parent should have to lose a child because of poor service delivery. He confirmed that City and Eskom officials met residents on Friday to discuss the community’s pleas for electricity in Ekupholeni.
Process of electrification
Maxiti said the City’s process for electrification requires certainty about who owns the land and whether the area could face relocation.
“You can’t electrify an area that might not exist in three years’ time,” said Maxiti.
He said the procedure is clearly documented in the city’s guidelines for working with Eskom.
He said he did not want to raise false hopes that the city would immediately bring power to the settlement, but his office would keep talks open between residents, the City, and Eskom.
He said he would not contest residents’ reports that eight people have died in the area since 2018 as a result of illegal connections.
He said the child’s family had already asked for help, but he felt it would be wrong to approach them without answers.
He said he was applying to the City’s mayoral fund, a discretionary fund managed by the mayor’s office that provides emergency assistance to residents facing hardship. He said he hoped the fund could help the family cope with their loss.
Yedwa said Eskom was saddened by the death of the child, who was killed after touching metal that had become live through an illegal connection.
He said the power utility is working with community leaders, councillors and other local partners to fight the spread of illegal connections, protect residents from danger, and keep the power network secure.
Eskom spokesperson Kyle Cookson said Ekupholeni informal settlement is not included in the current or upcoming financial year’s electrification plan.
“They are not on the list, as explained to stakeholders at the subcouncil meeting,” he said.
Cookson said the only sustainable way to prevent illegal connections is through formal electrification, which he described as a priority for Eskom once municipal approvals are secured.
He said electrification can only proceed after an area has been formally proclaimed for development and the required municipal services are in place.
Eskom’s process, he said, depends on an application and approval system managed by the City of Cape Town. “Only once the framework is in place and the area has been gazetted can Eskom electrify these communities,” he said.