Over 31 days, from 26 May to 25 June 2025, City energy teams fixed close to 12 000 streetlights, out of a total of 35 900 energy-related requests. The City’s Energy Directorate’s initiative to improve the turnaround times for streetlight-related service requests continues to show success.
‘Vandalism, theft and illegal connections across the metro continue to impact turnaround times as damaged infrastructure often needs to be entirely replaced, which could take many hours or even days in some cases. We have various interventions to reduce the risk of these crimes, but as always, we need the help of our residents to report suspicious activity of their neighbourhood power infrastructure. The impact of inclement weather, especially in winter times, also can be seen in the number of streetlight outages.
‘Wet and windy weather often increases the number of service requests and also may slow down turnaround times as it is typically dangerous for our teams to do electrical work in wet and windy weather. Over the period in review, Area East which includes Helderberg, Oostenberg, Bloemhof and Parow had the highest number of streetlight-related outages,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Alderman Xanthea Limberg.
The City manages more than 245 000 streetlights across the metro.
Requests attended to per area in the metro – theft and vandalism – remains the biggest driver of streetlight, and power outages:
| East | North | South |
| Helderberg| Oostenberg | Bloemhof | Parow | Vanguard | Mowbray | City | Atlantis | Mitchells Plain | Wynberg | Gugulethu | Muizenberg |
| 4 732 | 3 632 | 3 498 |
Protect Your Power
Report suspicious behaviour to the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre: 021 480 7700
The SAPS remains the lead authority in crime prevention.
*Note: the data looks at all streetlight-related service requests closed over a particular two-week period. Data is dynamic and new requests are constantly added to the already logged requests, as well as historic service requests. The data looks only at streetlight-related requests and does not include other energy service requests attended to over the period in review.
highbomber
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to have a good old go at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”
Poppy Coffee
Fun South African Fact: South Africa’s drinking water is rated 3rd best in the world for being “safe and ready to drink”.