MPUMALANGA – The Mkhondo electricity and water crisis in Mpumalanga has reached a critical point, with residents and businesses enduring years of severe power outages that have crippled daily life, compromised community security, and disrupted the essential water supply.
Local residents report receiving an average of only two hours of electricity per day. However, the municipality frequently fails to adhere to its own advertised load-shedding schedules due to operational delays in switching the power on and off. The prolonged outages have rendered household freezers inoperable, severely disrupted remote work, and forced students to seek refuge in local restaurants as early as 5:45 AM simply to find a place to study. Additionally, the inability to power home alarm systems has left neighborhood security highly vulnerable.
A municipal spokesperson confirmed that the Mkhondo Local Municipality currently has only one of its three substations operational, and it is functioning at merely half capacity. The municipality is currently receiving 18 MVA from Eskom, which falls far short of the town’s actual demand. Consequently, local authorities are forced to implement severe rotational load reduction. While necessary to manage demand, this measure is placing immense strain on the existing infrastructure and driving up long-term maintenance costs. Compounding the operational challenges, the municipality is currently battling an accumulated debt exceeding 900 million rand to Eskom.
In response to the escalating emergency, the provincial government has announced it is stepping in to assist. A provincial government spokesperson stated that the matter will be formally presented to the executive committee and the Premier to secure a necessary intervention. This intervention aims to fund and deploy an additional substation to ensure system redundancy—allowing one to remain fully operational if another develops a fault—and to comprehensively repair the existing electrical infrastructure.
The municipality has expressed hope that a second substation can be brought back online this weekend. However, officials caution that rotational load reduction measures will continue in the interim, leaving residents to wait longer for the restoration of reliable power and water services.
