Amnesty for illegal electricity users in Pretoria

The City of Tshwane is giving residents with illegal electricity connections until 31 March 2025 to come forward and declare their status at the metro’s customer care centres or electricity department to avoid penalties.

In a statement dated Tuesday, 5 March 2025, Tshwane spokesperson Zonke Mahlangu said this would avoid future disconnections for illegally connected households.

“Customers who have tampered with their electricity meters are invited to come forward and declare,” Mahlangu said.

“Voluntarily reporting tampering with electricity meters will qualify for a tamper fee waiver provided they agree to the installation of a new meter and a protective device.”

“Any outstanding debt will be handled in accordance with the city’s credit control and debt collection policy,” he added.

These residents can also declare their status by emailing their settlement request to [email protected] or [email protected].

Once declared, residents will receive a form to complete the request to normalise their electricity meter and be exempted from paying a tamper fee.

The metro acknowledges that illegal connections aren’t always set in malice but often due to the rising cost of living in the country.

However, it notes that it has effected over 66,448 disconnections since October 2024, pointing to residents struggling to pay their utilities.

“To address this, the coalition government took a report to council, which, on Thursday, 27 February 2025, passed the inventive and debt-relief scheme designed to discourage electricity meter tampering, often referred to as illegal connection,” said Mahlangu.

The City of Tshwane recently announced the disconnection of 55 tampered-with prepaid meters in Sunnyside, Pretoria, valued at around R1.7 million.

It added that the accumulative costs of illegal connections in the metro amount to almost R78 million.

Tshwane said its Department of Energy and Electricity conducted a raid in Sunnyside on 5 February, during which it shut down unlicensed businesses and arrested 19 foreign nations.

“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.”

The City of Tshwane has been cracking down on meter tampering in the metro. Between 21 and 27 January, it uncovered 67 illegal connections with tampered meters worth R1.7 million.

Moreover, it has 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.

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

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

National crackdown

According to Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, illegal connections are largely to blame for load reduction in South Africa.

Through load reduction, Eskom cuts power to specific areas for up to five hours during peak demand times to prevent network overloading.

Overloading results from disproportional demand for electricity on a localised network, which can cause significant damage to infrastructure, such as transformer explosions.

In January 2025, Ramokgopa committed to crackdown on illegal connections in his fight to bring an end to load reduction.

He said the state-owned power utility will work alongside municipalities to address load reduction with the same vigour and effort used to tend to the load-shedding issue.

“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,” Ramokgopa said.

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

This would also go a long way to helping Eskom’s revenue generation. The power utility said it missed out on R5.6 billion in electricity sales in the 2022/23 financial year due to illegal connections.