The irony isn’t lost on residents of the Northern Cape town of Kenhardt: construction of a R16.4bn solar power plant on their doorstep is almost complete, but the townspeople sit without electricity for days. And that’s on top of Eskom load-shedding.
For residents of the small town, power cuts are nothing new.
With the construction of the 540MW Scatec photovoltaic power plant — part of the government’s risk mitigation independent power producer procurement programme — hope of a consistent power supply was briefly rekindled. Until municipal mismanagement claimed its pound of happiness: residents say the town will see few of the benefits of the plant if maintenance of critical infrastructure such as distribution lines continues to be done haphazardly — if at all.
The problem, they tell the FM, lies with the Kai !Garib municipality, and the way the people running the show are appointed.
“Political appointments are the problem,” says one resident, speaking to the FM on condition of anonymity for fear of intimidation. “They [the appointees] don’t have the qualifications or skills to do the work.”
Says Edwill Eiman, who works at the local high school: “For such a small town, we have a lot of problems. The [power] transformers are problematic and they’re old. The municipality waits until they skiet [blow] before they do anything. And then we’re without power for days.”
Not so, says acting municipal manager Obakeng Isaacs. He tells the FM the municipality is doing its job: “Kai !Garib reacts within an hour when there is a problem on its [power] system, according to the prescripts of [the National Energy Regulator of South Africa]. It’s only in exceptional circumstances that parts aren’t immediately available and repairs take longer than 24 hours.”
But as the electricity infrastructure fails in Kenhardt, and the other two main towns in the municipality — Kakamas and Keimoes — the local council has been embroiled in a bitter battle with Eskom that dates to early 2017. It has racked up the second-highest debt owed to the power utility in the province, according to the National Treasury. (Sol Plaatje, the local municipality that includes the capital, Kimberley, leads the way.)
The dispute turns on the distribution of electricity to certain townships in the municipal area. Eskom must rely on the municipality’s crumbling power lines to supply customers in these areas. According to the municipality, Eskom owes it a substantial, but undisclosed, sum for use of these lines — something the utility disputes.
In the meantime, the municipality isn’t paying any of its debt to Eskom.
The situation deteriorated to the extent that Eskom said in 2018 it would cut power to the municipality. A slew of court cases in other jurisdictions pushed that out, as the courts sided with the municipalities and pressure groups in these towns.
(Kenhardt is not alone in its power struggle with Eskom: about 10 of 26 local municipalities in the Northern Cape owed the power utility more than R2bn last year, according to the Treasury. This is disproportionately high, given the sparse population of the province and considering that total municipal debt for the whole country stood at R56bn at the end of 2022.)
Kai !Garib reacts within an hour when there is a problem on its [power] system
— Obakeng Isaacs
If electricity cuts amid conflict with Eskom were the only problem plaguing the town, one could be more forgiving of the municipality. But water infrastructure is failing too: in the past, during high summer, water has been cut off at critical times, leading to some residents experiencing dehydration in 40°C weather. And when water is available — pumped about 80km from near Keimoes on the Orange River — it isn’t potable.
“It looks like river water,” says the resident who asked not to be identified. “At the water purification plant there are people who don’t know what they’re doing.”
The Keimoes-Kenhardt water system has deteriorated to such an extent that parliament issued a paper last year indicating the chemical dosing station, some of the pumps and motors at the abstraction point in the river, and the treatment plant and booster pump stations have to be replaced. The system is only 12 years old.
“Every November and December challenges are experienced with water to the area,” the parliamentary paper noted.
Not according to the inhabitants of the town — it’s even worse than that, they say.
Such is the issue with water that Suzette Wickens, co-owner of the Kenhardt Hotel, says: “You need a water tank or some kind of reserve to get through the day. You are guaranteed that you’re going to be without water at some point.”
Peter Bailey, a former national chair for health & safety for the National Union of Mineworkers, stood as an independent candidate in the 2021 municipal elections. He tells the FM: “We’re back to carrying water in buckets on our heads. It’s like the 1970s when we had to transport water for ourselves in bakkies.”
The municipality shifts the blame to Eskom: “Due to load-shedding, less clean water is produced in Lennertsville [where the Kenhardt pumping station is located],” Isaacs says.
Other services also seem to be poor-to-nonexistent. “I’ve been working at the school for 10 years now and the municipality has never cleaned in front of it. I clean the street in front of the school,” says Eiman.
“How is it possible that the refuse truck is broken for more than a month at a time?”
A drive through the town reveals the school’s entrance isn’t the only littered space. On the outskirts, a wall of rubbish at the local dump makes for an eyesore.
“The municipality doesn’t fix the fence around the rubbish dump,” says Wickens’s husband Eaton. “The people of Kenhardt cleaned it in the past of their own [volition] and look at it again now.”
Then there’s an apparently collapsing sewerage system that’s threatening to become a health issue at the school, says Eiman. “I’ve asked them how many times to come and empty the main drain. The waste doesn’t settle at the bottom of the drain any more. There are 400 kids in the school, and it is unlivable.”
We’re back at carrying water in buckets on our heads. It’s like the 1970s when we had to transport water for ourselves in bakkies
— Peter Bailey
The problem would seem to be systemic. By the middle of October, Kai !Garib hadn’t published its annual financial statements for the year through end-June. They should have been finalised by August 31, in terms of the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act.
The municipality’s financial statements for the previous fiscal year received a harsh qualified opinion from the auditor-general, who found: “The leadership’s lack of accountability for sound financial management had a negative impact on the municipality’s financial sustainability, management of assets, overspending of the budget and irregular expenditure.”
Among the issues in the financial statements was the fact that the amount owed to trade creditors — including Eskom and the local water users’ association — ballooned to R641m from R488m the previous year. The R153m jump in payables compares with a measly R125m in revenue collected from services: sales of electricity and water, fees charged for refuse removal and sewerage, as well as property rates.
Of course, the municipality’s ability to generate revenue and maintain its infrastructure is hampered by the amount of electricity and water lost, primarily through illegal connections.
In the year through end-June 2022, electricity losses amounted to R22m, or more than a quarter of the total electricity sold. Water losses amounted to R4.6m, or more than a third of total water sales.
“There was a long stretch of time where there were no electricity meters available in the municipality,” says Wickens. “The municipality then connected power to the houses without meters.”
Kenhardt isn’t a big town and, if the municipality really wanted to tackle nonrevenue electricity use, it could do so quite quickly.
“There aren’t that many houses in the town,” says Wickens. “Let someone walk by all of them and check whether they have meters that are working. But there isn’t any will to deliver services in the town.”
On the other hand, residents say that when paying customers are late to settle their bills, the municipality is quick to act.
“Look, next month is bonus month at the municipality,” says Eiman. “Whether they deliver any services or not, if you don’t pay, they cut your electricity. So, we all know the municipality is going to get their debtors [among those who pay] up to date this coming month.”
But residents say there is no real movement towards ensuring reliable electricity and water supply in Kenhardt — or its two sister towns. It’s led to despair among some. “We don’t know what to do any more,” says Eiman.
Wickens ventures a solution: “It needs to be fixed from the top.”
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