RUSTENBURG HERALD - RUSTENBURG - Ward 17 residents in "uptown" Rustenburg - especially Frederick and Cuckoo Avenues as well as certain areas in Waterval East (Ward 42) are frustrated beyond imagination by die Rustenburg Municipality's apparent inability to apprehend the culprits and layabouts who have been vandalising the notorious Adelaide substation in Waterval East/Azalea Park/Mountain View area for up to six or seven times during the past 30 days.
Though most areas in Rustenburg have gone unaffected by the vandalism of the substation, residents of the above mentioned areas have been left without electricity time after time with interruptions often lasting anything between six to nine hours if not longer. The past weekend was probably the "blackest" of the entire month with the substation being vandalised no less than twice since Friday - first on Friday afternoon and again during the very early morning hours of Sunday morning. It seems that the culprits were simply waiting in the surrounding veld for the municipality's teams to restore the electricity and leave before they would return almost immediately to resume their devil's work. Sunday morning's blackout nonetheless lasted from approximately 02:00 on Sunday morning until shortly after 15:00. To add to the frustration of residents, the Rustenburg Municipality's electrical units were forced to shut down electricity at 20:30 on Sunday evening barely 25 minutes to the kick-off of the World Cup Rugby quarter final clash between the Springboks and France which was scheduled for 21:00. According toe Cllr Tanya Rothman of Ward 17 the shutdown was necessitated to allow work on the substation to reconnect certain areas which were still off the grid by Sunday evening. Though electricity was restored sometime during the night, it was much too late for rugby enthusiasts to see the outcome of the clash which fortunately saw the Boks eliminating the host country from the tournament with a single point (29 - 28).
For residents the greatest frustration is that during the entire past month the Rustenburg Municipality couldn't manage to come up with a strategy to prevent the looters from vandalising the substation time and time again with the cost of the repair work, not to mention possible damage due to untimely interruptions running into hundreds of thousands of rand. Residents are up in arms about the fact that the municipal leadership who are renowned for their exorbitant salaries, couldn't succeed in more than a month to come up with a solution to the ongoing problem. It goes beyond comprehension that even after several consecutive weeks of vandalism after vandalism at exactly the same substation and more or less at the same times, the thought of contracting the services of even the most mediocre or affordable security company to protect the Adelaide substation on a 24/7 basis had never dawned upon the RLM. Not even the past weekend's spree of "attacks" (what else could it be?) on Adelaide substation were enough to convince the RLM that the contracting of 24/7 security could no longer be postponed. "The situation as it is leaves me as Ward Councillor practically powerless in any efforts to protect ratepayers from another series of blackouts and untold inconvenience caused by this,” Cllr Rothman said. A community meeting with residents of Ward 17/Ward 42 and management of the RLM should have been at the top of RLM's priority list for at least the past three weeks but in spite of this the only response by RLM is that Executive Mayor Shiela Mabale-Huma cancels a crucial community meeting for Wards 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 42 in terms of her Mayoral Outreach programme on short notice. To the relief of Ward 17 residents it must be added that the latest incident of vandalism at the Adelaide substation on Sunday morning clearly didn't exactly go as planned for the gang of looters when one of the four suspects was seriously electrocuted and is believed to have died from his injuries. "No one could survive direct contact with a live busbar", a worker of the municipality's electrical teams responded to the incident. Another looter was captured by private security personnel while two of the culprits have managed to escape. Meanwhile residents in Wards 17 and 42 are waiting anxiously for proactive response by the municipality.
