Constant Power Issues leaves Community Frustrated
Residents of Pretoria-North have been left increasingly frustrated by ongoing and frequent power outages, which they say occur three to four times a week and cannot simply be blamed on recent storms.
The outages stem from repeated faults in the 132kV Bellom-Capital lines and substations, including major feeder cables that tripped due to an earth fault at the end of November.
Community members complain that the metro provides little clarity, often reusing the same reference numbers for new complaints, leaving them unsure whether their issues are even registered.
Technical explanations from officials—such as transformer trips, damaged cables, and debris blown onto overhead lines—offer no timelines for resolution, reinforcing perceptions of poor infrastructure maintenance and mismanagement. Local councillor Quentin Meyer has acknowledged the crisis, noting that service reliability has worsened under the new coalition government of ActionSA, ANC, and EFF, and that even during previous load-shedding, service was more dependable.
For many residents, the repeated reassurances from the metro feel like excuses rather than solutions, deepening distrust and highlighting what they see as a broader collapse in service delivery.
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