Pretoria prepaid meter crackdown

The City of Tshwane, through its “Reclaim Our City” initiative, uncovered 55 tampered-with prepaid electricity meters in Sunnyside worth R1.7 million.

Moreover, the accumulative costs of meter tampering in the City of Tshwane amount to nearly R78 million.

In a statement, the metro said its Department of Energy and Electricity conducted the operation on Wednesday, 5 February 2025, which shut down unlicensed businesses and arrested 19 foreign nationals.

“As part of the City of Tshwane’s efforts to target lawlessness in Sunnyside, a successful meter tampering operation was conducted in the area, which uncovered tampered meters to the value of R1,669,650,” said spokesperson Zinhle Mahlati.

“This latest operation in Sunnyside forms part of targeted efforts by law enforcement to clamp down on unlawful and notorious activities in the area.”

Authorities shut down unlicensed businesses, arrested foreign nationals, and issued offenders fines worth thousands of rands.

The metro has been clamping down on illegal electricity use in the city for several weeks. Between 21 and 27 January 2025, authorities uncovered 67 tampered meters worth R1.7 million.

“The City has also conducted successful illegal disconnections in targeted areas, including Lotus Gardens and Fort West in Region 3,” added Mahlati.

“The mayoral executive has made a commitment to improve service delivery. To achieve this objective, increasing revenue collection is paramount.”

She said residents who steal electricity are destroying the City of Tshwane’s efforts to improve service delivery for all residents.

Tshwane’s efforts to tackle electricity theft in the metro have uncovered 2,339 manipulated meters since July 2024.

“About 494 of these accounts were on second tamper identification. The total cost of the accumulative tampering is R77,831,041,” said Mahlati.

The metro’s statement also revealed that 106,766 prepaid meters in the City of Tshwane have yet to be converted to the new token identity rollover.

Nearly 255,000 prepaid meters are vending on the converted system.

Electricity theft is a national problem in South Africa, necessitating the implementation of load reduction in many areas to prevent the overloading of electricity networks.

In late January 2025, Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced his plans to crack down on illegal connections in the country to end load reduction.

He said South Africa’s state-owned power utility, Eskom, will work with municipal authorities to tackle load reduction.

“It’s unacceptable that parts of the country go hours without electricity, and as a result, the progress made on the load-shedding front has no meaning to them,” the Minister said.

“We plan to work alongside municipalities as many instances of illegal connections need to be formalised.”

Illegal connections are the primary reason behind Eskom’s implementation of load reduction.

These connections can overload networks due to the disproportional demand for electricity placed on localised networks. This can cause substantial damage to infrastructure and leave large areas without power for extended periods.

To prevent this, Eskom cuts off electricity to areas with high proportions of illegal connections during peak hours, usually in the mornings and evenings.

These power outages can last for up to five hours at a time.

In 2024, the power utility increased its efforts to crack down on illegal connections. It disconnected communities, issued offenders hefty fines, and raided an illegal electricity operation in Leeupoort, Gauteng.

Eskom announced the successful raid on a farm in Leeupoort in December 2024. It found an extensive illegal electricity operation supplying around 600 informal households in the area.

It estimates the illegal operation to have cost it more than R6.6 million in lost electricity infrastructure.

“Intelligence investigations uncovered that stolen electrical equipment was being used to supply electricity illegally to nearby informal settlements in exchange for payment,” Eskom said.

It noted that it had been investigating the operation since 2018 but could not conduct a raid on the property without the help of authorities, which it got in December 2024.

This was due to fears over the safety of Eskom’s staff and security contractors, as the property was heavily guarded.