Parts of Macassar were again without power for hours on end on Sunday (23 October). This while residents also had endure scheduled bouts of load shedding.
The latest outage comes 14 days after residents took to the streets in protest on Sunday 9 October, after a power outage of more than 12 hours affected parts of Macassar. But things got out of hand on the following evening (Monday 10 October), when the protest turned violent with burning tyres blocking access to the area (“Macassar residents angry”, DistrictMail & Helderberg Gazette, 12 October).
Community activist Debbie Myburgh confirmed the electricity went out at 14:00 and returned at 20:00 in the latest extended power outage.
“The scheduled load shedding was from 12:00 to 14:00, and then power went on for a couple minutes before it went off, and stayed off until 20:00,” she said.
Ward 109 councillor Peter Helfrich confirmed he followed up with Eskom since the lights went out. “It has not been able to advise what the fault is and when power would be restored to the entire ward,” he said.
Eskom spokesperson Kyle Cookson confirmed a cable fault had caused the latest outage.
“The teams are on site doing repairs,” he said. “We don’t have an estimated time of repair yet.”
Residents, however, were relieved when the electricity supply was restored at 20:00 just as scheduled load shedding was set to kick in. They were spared from that round of blackouts.
