Remember, this is all the White Man’s fault:
City Power’s collapse threatens Johannesburg’s future.
Today City Power operates with an acting CEO, and 122 of its 278 professionally qualified posts are vacant. The utility has failed to generate enough revenue to cover its costs for several years, while rising Eskom prices, electricity theft, illegal connections and customers moving to alternatives such as rooftop solar are putting further pressure on its finances. By 2025, it was running a deficit of R4.3-billion.
Between July 2025 and March 2026, City Power reported 2.1 million forced interruptions. It took 11 hours on average to restore each one, and customers went without electricity for an average of 20.6 hours over the period. In some cases they went without for weeks. Sixty percent of outages were caused by deteriorating and outdated networks, and City Power puts its infrastructure backlog at R44.25-billion.
For those with short memories, let me remind you that back in 1993, South Africa was a net exporter of electrical power, sending it to all its neighboring countries: Southwest Africa/Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
The African National Congress under Nelson Mandela came to power and began running the country, including the nationalized industries such as ESCOM (the monopoly electricity provider), in 1994.
So my opening statement was, in fact, incorrect. I apologize for the error.