We don’t matter
Rustenburg – “We don’t matter to the municipality, maybe because we stay on the wrong side of the railway line,” a community member who has been without electricity for days, told the Platinum Weekly.
Our first thought when we were contacted by members of the community staying in Rustenburg East, was that it has something to do with the Eskom pylon that collapsed in Quartite Street last week.
It was not the case.
According to Democratic Alliance ward 18 councillor Cobus Nortje: “It just needed a flip of a switch. It was a breaker that tripped at a substation, and it took days for the RLM to flip the switch.”
You sometimes wonder why people go to the extent of burning tyres in the road. Although the Platinum Weekly strongly opposes any form of vandalism, we did get a clearer picture of the helplessness and utter frustration of our community members living in East End, when we engaged with them.
“I saw the mother of a six-month-old baby standing in the street, crying. Amongst other things, the milk in her refrigerator went off and that was the last straw for her,” we were told.
A family with a week-old baby, and a three-year-old was stuck without electricity for nine days after a cable was damaged. According to councillor Nortje the cable was repaired but the family also had to wait several days just for the power to be switched back on again.
“What is worse,” a community member said, “is that we are being ignored.”
Coming home and being unable to cook your food, take a warm bath or relax in front of the television, is annoying. Having to deal with the situation for days on end, with your food rotting in your freezer, is a whole different kettle of fish.
If there was a reason for the municipality to not come and flip the switch on, the community members Platinum Weekly spoke to, were not told about it.
Prolonged power outages cause extreme financial strain, and the less fortunate are usually hit the hardest. Several residents living in Oos and Klopper Street in East End, Rustenburg, were without electricity for days on end.
With temperatures ranging from 29°C to 31°C during the past week, it did not take long before residents had to start making a plan with the food in their freezers.
“I didn’t have much in my freezer, so my food started going off quickly. I handed the food that was still OK to a few of the less fortunately people living in our area,” a community member told Platinum Weekly.
• Some of the residents who were totally frustrated and outraged about the situation, dumped their foodstuffs that defrosted on and around a mini substation. The desperation of some of the people staying in East End was only realised when the food disappeared shortly after.
Care 2b Kind, an organisation that assist up to 300 families with food parcels every month took a big knock.
“We had to throw away a lot of food that started to rot. We could have given at least 50 families something to eat but it could not be saved, and it had to be thrown out,” said Care 2B Kind’s Riana Kroese.
One of East End’s residents, which were clearly frustrated told us: “People are fed up, we are desperate, and it feels like the RLM just doesn’t care. The switch that had to be turned on has given problems in the past, so when our power went out, we knew that it was the same problem.
I personally spoke to one of the RLM’s electrical guys and told him that we suspect it’s just the switch, but was rudely told that I shouldn’t tell him how to do his job.”
In yet another complaint received by Platinum Weekly a resident said: “We must take care of each other. We are not barbaric because we stay on the other side of the railroad.”
Platinum Weekly reached out to the RLM for their comment but at time of going to print, we had not yet received their response.
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