Tenants in hijacked building don't know owners and don't pay for electricity

Residents of a hijacked building in Johannesburg claim they have tried several times to arrange electricity payments with the City of Johannesburg.

City Power ditched its cut-off operations on Wednesday after threats from the residents of flats on Betty Street in Jeppestown, after the entity cut off the power to another building. 

City Power had initially planned to cut power to four hijacked buildings but could not proceed to other buildings as residents became violent, intimidating journalists and City Power technicians.    

“The issue of these flats is in court. Who hijacked this building? You are afraid of Nigerians, you come after us, we don’t pay rent and it is owned by the Congolese. We are still going to court to this day,” claimed a tenant, Thulani Nzimande. 

He said tenants were paying for prepaid electricity through a third party but the agents who were there before did not pay the municipality.

Nzimande said he lives in a two-bedroom flat in the building with his family. He claimed that he used to pay R3,500 monthly rent until he stopped about a year ago. 

He said if the building was hijacked, it could have been one of the agents they were renting from. “We have lease agreements, we stopped paying. They [agents] were chased because they don’t maintain the building,” he said.

Nzimande claimed that residents went to the municipality to sort out the electricity problem but were told the matter was in court. “We will stay without electricity, if there is a plan to restore it, we will do that,” he said.

Another tenant, who did not want to be named, echoed Nzimande’s sentiments and claimed residents had to collect money and renovate the flat themselves.

“We stopped paying the rent because they were not maintaining the flats and we said if you don’t maintain — you must provide proof that the flat belongs to you,” he claimed.

He complained that the flat was dilapidated, but they had to start maintaining it on their own. “They [alleged agents] are using police to intimidate us and cut off our electricity. Yes, we are not paying and they [police] are being bribed. It's illegal connections all over here. Why choose this specific building?” asked the man who did not want to be named.

A woman who called herself Zihle claimed she had lived in the same building for more than eight years and paid rent for more than seven years. “I have paid for more than seven years, and we have been paying to different agents. They keep changing, until we stopped,” she said.

City Power inner city general manager Arsenio Cossa said they had initially issued notices to some of the buildings and notified residents about nonpayment. 

“In the events leading up to today we issued notices telling them we would like them to pay and failure to do so will result in disconnection of some services,” he said.

He said they had disconnected some of the buildings on several occasions but because of intimidation and threats on Wednesday, they had to stop.

General manager of security risk management at City Power, Sergeant Thela, said the entity will engage with the municipality’s leadership to find amicable ways to deal with hijacked buildings connected illegally to the entity’s electricity.

“As a city, we cannot continue having our services consumed by people who are living in hijacked buildings,” he said. 

Thela said when he was interacting with tenants, some claimed that they were paying a certain agency and some people who owned the building.

“Unfortunately, you find that the owner of the building who is on our books is a person who came to us and said 'I am no longer working or servicing that particular building and I am not going to pay for whatever is consumed there because I am not using that building, so City Power please close the account'. 

“Those are some of the complex issues we have to address and try to understand what the status is of the people who are staying there, the status of the owner and the status of the agent who may be receiving money but not passing it on to City Power,” said Thela.

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