Cape Town - The removal of illegal electricity connections sparked a feud between residents and City officials.
Chaos erupted at Oasis Farm in Philippi yesterday morning when a small army of police and metro police arrived in a Nyala.
Residents got wind of what was about to happen and then stood outside ready to fight.
They said the City was quick to cut their cables but did not respond to complaints about their flooded homes.
Fernando Williams said: “We have been trying to get the City to come and see what is happening to our homes but they never come out.
“We asked for sand so it could help us with the water, that didn’t happen either. No one wants to deal with the flooding, they want us to stay in misery. It has been three weeks. We have contacted councillors but they can send an amount of force like this, yet they can’t provide us with sand to fill our houses.
“How can they say this is a just society? This is not the first time that they came here, they’ve done this before.”
A City official identified where the cables were buried and asked the other staff members to dig out the wires.
An angry resident picked up a rock and told the workers to stop what they were doing. A stand-off ensued until the residents chased the police away. The law enforcement officers stood along Jakes Gerwel for more than an hour.
Meanwhile, the Oasis Farm residents barricaded the gravel road into the community with big concrete blocks, burning tyres and rubble.
The police then decided to return to the area and they forced their way in. A few rocks were thrown but no one was injured. When the police arrived for the second time, the residents stood and watched as their cables were dug out again.
The police had to use a stun grenade when a fight started between metro police and residents who didn’t want the cables to be confiscated. The people managed to take some, but the rest were cut from the pole and taken by the City.
Another resident, Portia Bosman, said they would go to their neighbouring Isiqalo informal settlement to cut cables.
“We have a dead cable because of Isiqalo residents. Every time the City comes here for our electricity but they never go to Isiqalo.
“We are going to close the road, to show the City that we are not happy about what they did.”
Mayco member for energy, councillor Beverley van Reenen, said their visit to the area was successful.
“And I think that we are sending a very strong message to say we will no longer tolerate this.
“In the second quarter we spent over R4 million in respect of illegal connections, vandalism, and theft, and they go hand in hand. It is incumbent on us to protect the infrastructure and most of all the customers.
“Besides the financial aspect, this also affects the broader community, like Mitchells Plain, because it’s the paying customers that are suffering, because they have extended outages, and that certainly isn’t fair.
“It’s enough that we have load shedding, but we are losing millions of rand and at the expense of our ratepayers.”
She said she would open her office for the residents to discuss the matter and the human settlements department.