‘Held Hostage by Thieves’: Inside Tshwane’s Costly and Growing Cable Theft Crisis

Across Tshwane, darkness has a way of falling long before the sun goes down. Not because of load shedding, this time, it’s deliberate. It’s theft, sabotage, and vandalism chipping away at the city’s power network and draining millions from an already stretched budget.

And residents are getting fed up.

Communities Left Vulnerable as Theft Escalates

In Pretoria West, the scale of the weekend damage shocked even long-time ward councillors.
Ward 1 councillor Leon Kruyshaar reported that 20 water meters and 10 power meters vanished in just 24 hours. That wasn’t all. Two 11kV cables were stolen along Van der Hoff Road the tenth such theft on that stretch this year alone.

For residents across Roseville, Pretoria Gardens, Daspoort, Claremont, Suiderberg, Hermanstad, Mountain View and Eloffsdal, it feels like a never-ending siege.

“The community is being held hostage by thieves,” Kruyshaar said, openly frustrated by the lack of visible action. “Where is the cable theft unit? They’re just not there.”

His comments echo what many Tshwane residents have been saying on social media: people are tired of waking up to dead fridges, silent Wi-Fi routers, and the smell of thawed freezer meat.

Online forums have become a daily roll call of outages, with residents swapping updates, venting, and joking about forming neighbourhood patrol squads, humour masking real anger.

A City Losing Millions and Control

City of Tshwane MMC for Utilities, Frans Boshielo, confirmed what most already suspected: the financial bleeding is significant.

Cable theft and vandalism cost the metro between R8 million and R10 million every year.
But even more alarming are the knock-on effects.

The city records around 2,000 unplanned outages every month, most of them caused by stolen or vandalised electrical equipment. Region 3, the central region, is hit the hardest, followed by Regions 4 and 1.

Boshielo said thieves have evolved their methods, now targeting electrical protection gear such as tripping batteries, earthing conductors, and network control cables, equipment that isn’t just expensive but critical for safety.

“One Key Opens 80% of Our Locks”

Perhaps the most shocking revelation came from Kruyshaar: many substations and mini-substations can be opened with a R35 key bought from a locksmith near the Hercules police station.

“You can walk in and buy a key,” he said. “One key opens 80% of our locks.”

That means criminals don’t need to break in. They simply unlock, switch off, and strip the infrastructure as if they work there.

And in many areas, the cupboards are already open because previous thieves vandalised them.

It’s an open invitation to targeted crime.

Councillors Ask: Where Is the Prevention?

While the city says it has intensified patrols and is exploring deterrent technologies like smart cables and real-time monitoring systems, councillors are questioning why prevention isn’t the top priority.

Ward 59 councillor Shaun Wilkinson said Groenkloof Village suffered yet another cable theft incident this weekend, adding to more than 100 thefts in a decade, almost one per month.

“So why are we still reacting instead of preventing?” he asked.

His concerns mirror community frustrations: residents feel abandoned, and the repeated outages are chipping away at quality of life, home security, and local business activity.

A Crisis Bigger Than Crime

Cable theft in South Africa isn’t new it has disrupted railways, telecoms, and major metros for decades. But Tshwane’s current wave feels particularly destabilising because it hits everyday life so directly and so frequently.

There’s also a growing belief among residents that cable theft syndicates are operating with alarming sophistication.
The R35 key revelation adds fuel to that fire.

While the city says collaborations with law enforcement are being strengthened, the public wants visible results arrests, convictions, and proactive protection.

Until then, thousands of households are living with the uneasy understanding that tonight’s lights might be tomorrow’s darkness.

A City at a Crossroads

Tshwane’s cable theft epidemic is more than a criminal nuisance, it’s a multimillion-rand crisis crippling essential infrastructure. Communities are frustrated, councillors are raising red flags, and the city’s promises of new technologies will take time to roll out.

For now, residents remain on edge, locked in a nightly battle against thieves who seem to have more access to the city’s power network than the people meant to protect it.

{Source: The Citizen}

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