HELEN ZILLE | When corruption and mismanagement bite

Johannesburg is in the middle of another of its mass electricity outages. There are many areas that have had no power for three or four days.

The response from City Power has been underwhelming. Calls have been closed without being resolved. Local managers have been unavailable. Councillors trying to find out information about causes and the path to restoration have been ignored.

The immediate cause of the outages appears to have been the continual wet weather. It has become a feature of Joburg’s electricity supply that improperly repaired faults are vulnerable to heavy rain leaking in through improperly secured joints.

City Power employees on the ground complain that there is no equipment in the stores. This means no spare parts to fix outages. 

Things are sourced very slowly or assembled from scrap parts found at the depots. The speed and effectiveness of fixing power outages have been reduced even further.

There seem to be far too few repair teams available. Some contractors are reportedly refusing to carry out repairs because they have not been paid for past work by City Power.

City Power is clearly short of money. The entity made a loss of R3.9 billion in the financial year that ended in mid-2025. For the six months till last December, it lost a further R2.8 billion.

That figure almost matches the R2.9 billion the city lost on electricity purchased from Eskom, but not paid for by consumers, either because it is stolen or billed but not collected. One report says City Power owes Eskom another R4 billion to purchase electricity.

This is against the background of City Power owing the city R22 billion. City Power is a city entity that is supposed to be financially self-sustaining.  

But in fact, it has to be consistently subsidised by the city, which completely undermines the purpose of its existence.

Most municipalities use electricity supply as one of their prime sources of revenue. They markup what they buy from Eskom and sell it on to customers at the markup price to fund other municipal activities.

City Power doesn’t do this and is, instead, a massive drain on finances.

Recent media reports of corruption in Joburg City Power make for startling reading. They provide an important reason for the lack of money.

The City Power CEO is accused of bribing the Hawks to hand over an affidavit about corruption made by a whistleblower.

Senior City Power officials are alleged to have threatened contractors with guns in order to extort money from high-value tenders.

One newspaper reports that senior ANC politicians are using party members who occupy official positions at City Power to siphon off money to pay for ANC party activities.

A City Power manager high up in the supply chain has been suspended so he doesn’t interfere with the investigation into extortion and corruption.

Another problem is the use of unqualified or overpaid contractors who get given contracts because of their political or personal connections to top officials.

An example of this is another media report about a City Power manager forcing a contractor to use two unqualified subcontractors.

The unqualified companies then caused a major failure, which resulted in the contractor being blamed and losing the contract. 

The DA in the Joburg council has applied in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act to see contractor appointments, invoices, quality control measures, and payment records. We’ve also requested to know the process followed in all senior appointments. 

There’s obviously a complete breakdown in control and accountability at City Power. The entity needs to be taken in hand immediately. Its failure is driving Joburg ever deeper into trouble.

This is an opinion piece.