DA councillors in Tshwane are working hard to keep residents informed of progress in restoring electricity across the city.
The fire at the Waltloo substation damaged the Njala infeed station, one of the critical points from which the city receives bulk electricity from Eskom.
We are very concerned that Tshwane might have lost critical transformer capacity at Njala and that the damage is more severe than the city had led on.
The loss of transformer capacity has necessitated attempted load reduction, in other words, the effective ‘rationing’ of electricity supply between different areas to avoid overloading the transformer capacity.
We hope that the city will be able to devise an engineering solution to stabilise the supply of electricity as soon as possible. This might include backfeeding electricity from other infeed stations.
But the need for such piecemeal solutions itself indicates how badly Tshwane’s electricity infrastructure has deteriorated in the past year.
The DA has had sight of a report by the Energy and Electricity Business Unit dated 1 June 2026 in which the following warning is signaled:
“Despite best efforts with existing resources, the lack of additional capital and operational funding places the electricity network at HIGH RISK of widespread unplanned outages during the 2026 Winter peak demand period, with the potential for large-scale blackouts in the event of Primary Substation Transformer failure.”
This is why the DA has lodged a NERSA complaint against Tshwane, to check that the city’s compliance with electricity license conditions, including maintenance obligations, is in fact being met.
We call for the city to make every effort to keep the public and councillors informed of plans to mitigate the power outage, and to commence an independent engineering condition assessment of the electricity network.
I also call on Mayor Nasiphi Moya to come out of hiding and address this crisis. She should make a public statement today.
This will enable the city, including a new government after the 4 November local government election, to optimise taxpayers’ money in order to prevent a catastrophic collapse of the Tshwane grid.