Helen Zille: “Duct-taped” City Power fawns on CR’s global guests, ignores Joburg locals

Key topics:Prolonged power outages hit residents as aging infrastructure failsCity Power failures rooted in mismanagement and political infightingR20bn overdraft deepens crisis, leaving residents to bear the cost.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Helen Zille*.City Power contractors were called in during the G20 Summit, kept on standby, and given the responsibility of making sure that delegates had uninterrupted electricity throughout the event. The objective was achieved, as no outages occurred at any of the summit venues.Meanwhile, ordinary residents faced a starkly different reality. Across areas such as Northriding and Kyasands, Strydom Park’s business hub, Northcliff, Berario and Parktown, power outages persisted for 1 to 5 days due to aging infrastructure, theft, and insufficient testing equipment and personnel.The G20’s “success” in maintaining uninterrupted power for global delegates stands in glaring contrast to the daily struggles of residents left in the dark, and once again, exposes the dangers of a city that is being held together with duct tape and lipstick.This contrast forced me to dig deeper and examine the root cause of the City’s persistent failure to provide residents with the fundamentals of a reliable electricity supply. On the surface, City Power’s outages, and collapsing infrastructure, seem like operational problems, but the reality runs far deeper..Read more:.SA’s electricity crisis: A tale of mismanagement and politics – Andrew Kenny.The utility’s struggles are symptoms of a systemic failure: years of mismanagement, ANC factionalism, and the City’s willingness to treat crises as emergencies rather than preventable problems. Cash flow, unpaid contractors, ageing infrastructure and an ever-growing internal overdraft, reveal a pattern of financial negligence which translates to public abuse that no resident should have to endure.This results in practices like the “closure” of logged fault complaints without the problems actually having being fixed. Residents report outages only to find the reports have mysteriously been closed without being attended to by technicians. Presumably that is to try and make City Power look as if it is meeting its targets to fix problems, by hiding its failures.Right to oversightIt’s sometimes difficult to spot this because entities are denying DA councillors their right to oversight when they demand answers for their residents. A basic function of councillors is to oversee what’s going on. That’s hard when they are denied access to City Power facilities. And this feeds into a sense of impunity by City Power. This is a violation of the law and prevents councillors from performing their basic oversight function.I am also deeply concerned about the widening gap in the City Power internal overdraft facility. City Power is currently operating deep in the red, with an overdraft of R20 billion, a staggering R4 billion increase from the previous year, when it stood at R16 billion. This is not a mere external debt; it represents an internal loan granted and managed by the City itself, highlighting the level of financial dependency on the city. City Power, which was intended to be self-sustaining, has now become a severe drain on the City.The Mayor, Dada Morero, and his executive, made up of the ANC/PA/EFF coalition continue to bail out City Power rather than enforce accountability. The accountability that is needed would ensure that managers face consequences for their bad decisions and if they don’t perform are replaced by people who can do the job.Every Rand borrowed comes at a cost, rising interest payments, delayed maintenance, unpaid contractors, and stalled infrastructure projects. The overdraft is a direct threat to Johannesburg residents, leaving them to bear the burden of blackouts and substandard service.Tolerance of mismanagementThe coalition’s tolerance of mismanagement ensures City Power remains trapped in a cycle of debt and dependency, masking decades of poor planning, financial mismanagement, corruption and cronyism, while ordinary citizens pay the ultimate price.This has caused significant damage, but the good news is that it can still be repaired.Achieving a stable and reliable electricity supply will require financial discipline, operational diligence, and strong, accountable leadership to resolve the ongoing power crisis..*Helen Zille is the chairperson of the DA’s Federal Council and the DA’s 2026 Mayoral Candidate for Johanneburg..This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission

Helen Zille: “Duct-taped” City Power fawns on CR’s global guests, ignores Joburg locals

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