Johannesburg - Angry Buccleuch residents who had been without power for five days, staged a picket outside the Eskom headquarters in Sunninghill on Friday, dumping rotten food outside the gates.
Buccleuch had been without power since a fault was reported at a substation five days ago.
The power outage also affected the nearby Munyaka Waterfall Estate, where residents blockaded the entrances in protest on Thursday.
In videos that were shared on social media on Friday, residents are seen arriving at the Eskom offices in a convoy and proceeding to hold their peaceful protest with boards saying “we want power”, “rotting food” and “answer” amongst many other things and chanting “we want power”.
They also banged on the gates and dumped some of their food items, including rotten full chickens, saying their groceries were beginning to rot at home.
[WATCH] Angry Buccleuch resident dropping her rotten food at Eskom’s doorstep. #KayaNews #BuccleuchWantsPower #Eskom MP pic.twitter.com/pRKQKMURkI
— Kaya 959 News (@KayaNews) May 19, 2023
These guys at @Eskom_SA mega watt park. They are not playing pic.twitter.com/XKzaQm15l8
— Daddy 𝙼𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚍𝚒 𝚘 𝙼𝚘𝚗𝚐𝚠𝚎 🐘 #Sundowns (@mopedi_) May 19, 2023
The protests began on Thursday when the residents of Munyaka Waterfall Estate barricaded the entrance and exit points of the estate in protest against the ongoing power outage, which they had held Balwin Properties responsible for.
Balwin Properties which developed the luxury and lifestyle estate, distanced itself from the power outages, telling angry residents to direct their anger towards the power utility, Eskom, which confirmed that the power outage was due to a fault at their Buccleuch substation.
“We are astounded that residents are blaming these electrical faults on Balwin instead of placing pressure on Eskom to fix the problem,” said Balwin Properties CEO Steve Brookes.
On Friday, Balwin approached the courts on an urgent basis to ensure residents stopped blocking the exits and entrances to Munyaka.
The interdict would allow the SAPS to take action should residents unlawfully block entrances again in future.
“Our best efforts to explain that the root cause of the problem is due to Eskom’s infrastructure were ignored, and unreasonable demands were made.
“In order to protect the civil rights and interests of all homeowners, the Munyaka residents association and Balwin successfully obtained an urgent interdict against the illegal behaviour,” said Brookes.
The company further warned that they would be taking legal action against individuals who took to social media to spread false and misleading information to defame or cause reputational harm to Balwin and Munyaka.
According to Balwin properties, power was restored in the Buccleuch area at 3:30pm on Friday afternoon.
IOL