From beach bliss to blackout hell: Residents flee fancy estate due to power crisis

Some residents at a popular upmarket private estate with its own “beach” east of Pretoria plan to leave due to constant long-lasting power outages over the past four years.

The popular estate with a lagoon, The Blyde Riverwalk, was the capital city’s darling of property development when it was officially launched in 2018.

Problems started a year later when criminals targeted the area for cable theft, resulting in residents living in the dark for hours. This also affected the Greencreek and Savannah Country estates.

Last week residents were without electricity for about three days. This was caused by electricity infrastructure failure, not cable theft. In December last year, residents suffered the same fate on three different days, including New Year’s Eve.  

A month before that residents spent about eight days during two weeks without electricity. This was mostly caused by cable theft.

Residents are gatvol

Annelize Moogley who has been living in The Blyde since 2018, told TimesLIVE she was selling her home bought for R1.8m because the power problems were “a nightmare”.

“We are fed up and have had enough,” she said. “No one gives us feedback during the outages. This is extremely frustrating for the amount of money we pay to live here. I am going to sell the property because I am not prepared to go on like this. It is a constant issue.”

A frustrated Moogley said when she and her family came back from holiday last week they were greeted by water dripping from their defrosted fridge.

“It was a mess. Water was all over the lounge. On Monday I went back to work and there was no electricity after it went off on Sunday morning. You have to take a cold shower and cannot blow-dry your hair. You go to work looking like a zombie.”

Two other residents who have been renting at the estate for several years told TimesLIVE they were moving out. One said they believed the property developer Balwin and Tshwane municipality were not doing enough to solve the problems.

A software developer and resident at the estate who only wanted to be identified as Luke said the substation feeding the estate needed an infrastructure upgrade.

“Municipal officials told us in December they conducted temporary solutions but did not properly fix the problem due to staff shortages. Last week, when we had outages, they said they were fixing the problem properly. The outage that started on Sunday lasted for about 27 hours.”

He said power outages were ruining the investments of people who bought apartments.

“It depreciates the property value.”

Balwin and Tshwane losing  power security battle?

Balwin Properties CEO Steve Brookes said load-shedding, cable theft and illegal connections worsened the power problems.

“The city of Tshwane is aware of the failing infrastructure and has been attending to maintenance matters, albeit slowly,” Brookes said.

He said the company is considering installing generators at its cost “to alleviate poor service delivery from the city.”

Brookes said the company had been pressuring the metro to upgrade, maintain and protect electricity infrastructure, but outages continue.

He said there were plans for a new substation to be built by the metro but the start of construction had been delayed and no completion date was committed.

Pouring concrete on top of cables to prevent theft and hiring private security to patrol were some of the interventions taken.

Metro spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the municipality was making strides in the fight against cable theft.

Mashigo said the substation was not in a vulnerable condition despite recent outages caused by a ring main unit that exploded.

“Heathery substation is a newly constructed facility and is under 24/7 security guard, hence there hasn’t been a case of vandalism experienced recently. It has sufficient capacity to carry the load to the community of Savannah Estate, Greencreek and The Blyde.” 

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