Inside City Power’s Crackdown on Joburg CBD’s Hijacked and Illegal Power Users

On a busy Thursday morning in Johannesburg’s CBD, City Power crews rolled in, not to fix outages, but to cut them off. By the end of the day, illegal electricity connections at several properties had been ripped out, meters seized, and a handful of arrests made.

The operation is part of a week-long push by the municipal power utility to tackle a long-running and costly problem: electricity theft. City Power says Johannesburg customers collectively owe the entity R1.6 billion, and just this week’s enforcement drive could recover up to R30 million.

The dangerous reality inside hijacked buildings

Among the 184 “problem buildings” flagged across the city, 62 are believed to have been hijacked and 122 are in violation of municipal bylaws. These aren’t just legal issues, they’re safety time bombs.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena painted a grim picture: overcrowded flats with crumbling walls, live wires dangling like vines, and rooms so packed that fire escapes are an afterthought. “These conditions are highly combustible and prone to devastating fires,” he warned. “Illegal connections also put huge strain on our grid, destabilising the entire system.”

Thursday’s busts: from stolen meters to street-level crime

Thursday’s sweep through the CBD saw three hijacked buildings disconnected. On Commissioner Street, officials shut down a shoe-repair shop that had been operating off a residential meter, one suspected to have been stolen from a township home. That meter was yanked out on the spot.

In a show of force, police joined the operation, making multiple arrests and confiscating bundles of stolen electrical wiring — evidence of an underground trade that feeds these illicit connections.

Why this matters for the rest of Joburg

Illegal electricity use isn’t just a “CBD problem.” It hits every paying customer in the city. Overloaded circuits cause frequent outages, interrupting production in factories, disrupting small businesses, and sometimes even triggering job losses.

“When businesses lose power, they lose money and eventually, they lose staff,” said Mangena. “Meanwhile, law-abiding residents are left sitting in the dark because of someone else’s crime.”

A crackdown with no end date

City Power says the blitz will continue until illegal usage is brought under control. For now, the message to offenders is clear: pay up or power down.

Still, the challenge runs deeper than just cutting wires. Hijacked buildings are often part of larger criminal syndicates, and tackling them means confronting entrenched urban decay, weak law enforcement, and the desperation of people who can’t afford legal electricity.

For the rest of Johannesburg, Thursday’s raid was a small but symbolic reminder, while the city’s power problems may be complicated, City Power is, at the very least, willing to get its hands dirty to fix them.

{Source: The Citizen}

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