Joburg residents plunged into darkness after City Power contractors ‘stole copper cables’

Two employees of contractors hired by Johannesburg’s City Power have been arrested for theft of copper cables.

Residents in Naturena and surrounding areas were plunged into darkness for a “prolonged period of time this past week” after the theft. The suspects were bust in possession of a 10m copper cable on Friday night. The two were employed by contractors tasked with repairs after an “earlier cable theft along the Eikenhof line supplying electricity to Naturena”, said the power utility.

“Information was received that during their work, the two contractor employees cut and stole copper cable from the trench, thus extending the length of the cable stolen earlier by criminals.

“On further investigation, it was discovered that more cables had already been stolen and sold when the arrests were made,” City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said.

“The City Power security manager responsible for the area operationalised the information and led a team of City Power security personnel and members of the SAPS' essential infrastructure task team to the scene of the crime. During the preliminary investigation, suspicious activities were detected which resulted in the arrest of the two contractor employees. 

“The suspects are booked at Mondeor police station and face charges related to tampering and theft of essential infrastructure.”

On Friday, Naturena residents marched to the City Power offices “demanding the power be restored, after having spent days in the dark”. 

“This prolonged outage was a result of multiple cable thefts by heavily armed criminals around the Eikenhof area, which also affected the power supply to the Johannesburg Prison. 

“City Power will now move with speed to restore power to the rest of the affected areas,” said Mangena.

The entity's CEO Tshifularo Mashava welcomed the arrests.

“While we are pleased with the arrest and the strong message it sends, we find it deeply concerning that some of the contractors are seemingly part of a syndicate involved in cable theft. We have never ruled out the involvement of internal people in some of the thefts, and that is why we have strengthened internal controls to ensure that we bring to book all those implicated,” said Mashava. 

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