AfriForum instructs legal team to act against Eskom again

The civil rights organisation AfriForum and Eskom may once again butt heads in court over the additional load shedding planned for Zeerust as a result of the Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality’s overdue bill. This municipality’s debt amounts to around R98 million.

AfriForum won a victory in the Pretoria High Court on 16 November 2022 after Eskom implemented additional load shedding in Zeerust from 30 July 2020 to 6 August 2020 due to the municipality’s overdue bill. The additional outages left the area without power for six additional hours a day. The order obtained by AfriForum set aside the 2020 decision of Eskom to interrupt the power supply to the municipality.

“In most cases, consumers pay their electricity bill faithfully to the municipality, but the municipality fails to pay Eskom. Today, AfriForum’s legal team sent an urgent letter to Eskom warning them not to continue with the planned interruption. If Eskom does continue with this malpractice, we will approach the court to once again set aside the decision. Disputes like this that take place between state organs should not have a negative impact on the general public,” says Petrus Coetzee, adviser for Local Government Affairs at AfriForum.

“Thanks to AfriForum’s Zeerust branch, we received the information quickly and our legal team could immediately take action against Eskom to try to prevent this malpractice from taking place. The court order clearly states that Eskom’s previous actions were wrong and we will continue to monitor the situation to prevent the community’s rights from being violated,” says Armand Viljoen, AfriForum’s district coordinator for Marico.