Residents of Soshanguve, Block BB have taken to the streets to protest a prolonged energy crisis that has caused record power cuts in their area.
The demonstrators gathered on Wednesday between Soshanguve Plaza and Mabopane Station Modal Interchange to reveal their frustrations.
Due to Eskom’s failure to maintain its ageing coal power infrastructure, South Africa has been experiencing scheduled blackouts, also known as load shedding, for years. But the outages have reached new extremes over the past 12 months. Lights go off several times a day, sometimes for almost 12 hours in total.
One of the residents expressed frustration at the situation. “We, the community of Block BB are living in extreme situations where every week we don’t have lights.
In the current outage, which is not the first in Block BB, nobody from The City of Tshwane had come to attend to the problem despite some residents having reported and received acknowledgment about their cases.
The Buitekant Road was blocked by residents, affecting bus and taxi services. During the protest, disgruntled groups placed tyres and trees along the roadway and set it alight. Residents also threw dirt onto the burning pile.
Commuters were forced to find an alternate route to their destinations, Protests were planned at other locations including Block L.
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