Why load shedding never really ended for Johannesburg residents the R2,000 cost of rotten food

The average Johannesburg resident waits 14 hours for power restoration and households can lose nearly R2,000 worth of food during extended outages, according to reporting by IOL. The city’s electricity network is struggling under a R44 billion infrastructure backlog and repeated unplanned outages that arrive without warning.

Unplanned outages replace scheduled blackouts

According to IOL, scheduled blackouts have largely disappeared but have been replaced by unplanned outages that often leave homes and businesses without electricity for days. These interruptions come with no schedule, no warning and no simple way for residents to plan around them.

“I got to a point where I don’t even ask what happened. I’ll wait for it to come back whenever it comes back,” one resident wrote after another prolonged outage, IOL reports.

Financial toll on households and businesses

Using Pietermaritzburg’s Economic Justice & Dignity average food basket value of around R5,500 as a reference, IOL says each extended outage can cost homes almost R2,000 in spoiled food. Prolonged outages have also killed small businesses and made working from home impossible for some residents.

Waiting days for repairs

IOL reports that others have described waiting five, six and even eight days for power to be restored after incidents such as cable theft or equipment failures stretches long enough to spoil food and disrupt livelihoods. Public frustration is visible under City Power’s outage updates, where residents swap reference numbers, ask whether repair crews have arrived and describe logging the same fault repeatedly while waiting for a response.

For many, IOL says, interaction with City Power has become a ritual of diminishing hope.

What City Power’s numbers show

City Power’s latest quarterly report, cited by IOL, attributes roughly 60% of outages to ageing equipment, 20% to theft and vandalism, 15% to external factors such as Eskom faults and third-party damage, and 5% to network overload. The report also notes an infrastructure backlog of R44 billion.

There are some improvements: outages fell by about a fifth between the April–June and July–September quarters, and the average time customers spent without power dropped from just over 24 hours to just over 14 hours. City Power says nearly 97% of unplanned outages were fixed within 24 hours, though it missed its own 98% target leaving a minority of households waiting days rather than hours.

Cable theft and the cycle of disruption

IOL reports City Power describes cable theft and vandalism as a moving target across the network and says a multidimensional strategy is required to combat these crimes. The utility has increased security measures and prosecutions: essential infrastructure crimes declined by 13% year-on-year, and in the first quarter 12 suspects were sentenced to a cumulative 97 years and eight months in prison, compared with seven suspects receiving 61 cumulative years in the same period the prior year.

Despite these efforts, each successful cable theft triggers a cascade of outages and repairs that can shift the impact to different parts of the network.

Debt and the limits on fixes

IOL reports the financial environment compounds the operational problems. The City of Johannesburg and City Power owe Eskom approximately R5.28 billion. Payments totalling around R1.2 billion have been made since Eskom threatened to cut supply, but an overdue balance of approximately R2.7 billion remains. IOL also notes the current account due on 5 June went unpaid.

That combination of a large infrastructure backlog and continuing debt constrains the room to invest in repairs and upgrades, IOL says, leaving many residents facing repeated outages and mounting costs.

What residents are left with

For the Johannesburg households who lose food and income during long outages, the statistics offer little comfort. As IOL puts it, the city’s electricity crisis has been delayed, not resolved, and for many residents the experience of waiting for power to return continues.