The damage and unaccounted electricity usage over a three-year period has cost the already financially burdened power utility close to R800 000. Eskom’s Free State spokesperson, Stefanie Jansen van Rensburg, says the farmer in question, identified as Willem Venter, plead guilty to four counts of malicious damage to state property in the Free State Regional Court last week Thursday. 

Venter’s conviction comes on the back of an extensive investigation by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation Unit, known as the Hawks, alongside audits by Eskom which revealed the agriculturist had tampered with the meter on his farm between 2016 and 2019,  resulting in electricity to the value of R770 143, 00 not being recorded and billed. The power utility’s Senior Manager of Customer Services in the Free State, Fatime Bibi Bedir, has welcomed the conviction and wishes to use it to send a message to the public that “electricity theft does not pay”.

Eskom is, however, not the only utility or company feeling the pinch financially with regards to tampering, theft, and instances of vandalism to infrastructure. 

In February 2020, the then Managing Executive of Vodacom in the central region, which comprises of the Free State and Northern Cape, Mamello Selamolela, said 40% of their base stations or sites in the region, which has power alternatives like batteries and generators installed, were the targets of attempted and successful vandalism incidents. Selamolela said while this is a problem that affects all mobile network providers in the country, it’s a problem costing Vodacom in the region of R15 million a year on average repairing sites that have been vandalised.

She says this is money, the company cannot afford, but that ends up being spent due to criminal activity. Selamolela has noticed that “the worse the load-shedding problem becomes, the worse the vandalism also becomes”, a vicious circle. One of Vodacom’s sites in the region has been frequently targeted by vandals, forcing the company to spend R2,5 million “just on alternative power on that site alone”. The Managing Executive notes that this is unsustainable in the long run.

The mobile network provider has been working alongside law enforcement officials, police, and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), much like Eskom, to increase penalties for the theft of network and electricity infrastructure, a feat which they say has been achieved. Selamolela says the theft of infrastructure is an industry-wide problem and needs to be dealt with as such.

OFM News