After seven years of extended electricity outages, the Kya Sand Association, representing some 60 businesses north of Johannesburg, decided it had enough and threatened a rates boycott. It was either that or taking the City of Joburg to court and forcing it to invest in upgrading infrastructure to ensure a steady power supply. “We had about 100 days of power outages over the last year,” says Bruce Turner, chair of the association. “That’s not your regular load shedding.
We had periods of four, five and six days without power because of cable theft, lack of maintenance and under-investment in infrastructure.“That roughly 100 days without power was more than double the 45 days in 2022 and 26 days in 2021. It’s hard to run a business under circumstances like this,” says Turner.“There are some large businesses here, but it’s mostly small, three or four people businesses that cannot afford generators and solar power backup system