City Power abandons operation to cut power in hijacked buildings after violence

City Power called off its operation to disconnect tenants from four alleged hijacked buildings in the inner city on Wednesday.

This was after resisting tenants became violent and started to attack some of the journalists and technicians as the police pulled out of the operation, apparently without warning.  

The entity’s revenue protection team, with police and JMPD, had planned to disconnect several hijacked buildings in the Jeppe area, which they believe are occupied by suspected illegal and violent occupants.

This was part of the entity’s effort to ramp up revenue collection efforts as they believe the actions of those who hijacked buildings were not different from the illegal connectors who put pressure on the electricity network.

The operation started smoothly as technicians disconnected the main power supply to one of the flats from the substation.

Tenants then threatened technicians and mistreated some of the journalists. A videographer from Newzroom Afrika was sprayed with a substance in the face. 

Addressing members of the media at the City Power depot in New Doornfontein, the entity's spokesperson apologised to journalists about the developments.

“Let me start by apologising for some of the mistreatment that journalists received, especially at the hands of the tenants in some of the buildings. It is really uncalled for, and City Power apologises for that,” Isaac Mangena said. 

He said when they left the scene it was becoming volatile.

“The police decided to quickly pull out without ensuring that most of you [media] are actually safe, and we will talk to them about that so when we are engaged in these kinds of operations, every person that is part of that operation should return to base safely,” he said. 

City Power security risk management GM Sergeant Thela said they assessed the situation while conducting the operations. “We realised the situation was escalating in a manner that [would] maybe result in some injuries, at worst some fatalities,” he said.

He added they had to withdraw the operations.  

TimesLIVE