Millions of unemployed South Africans, many of whom survive on a Social Relief of Distress Grant government grant of R370 (about US$21) per month, are not able to pay for electricity and still afford food and shelter. In the working class community of Thembisa in South Africa’s industrial heartland of Gauteng, the local government recently tried to make all families pay a fixed monthly fee of R126 (US$7) for electricity. But the residents could not afford this and in late July, occupied roads and shut down the area. Within a day, the mayor scrapped the electricity fee. Luke Sinwell, a scholar of popular history and grassroots mobilisation in South Africa, explains how protests might just be the only way for working class South Africans to make their voices heard.
Is electricity affordable in South Africa
No. Electricity prices have skyrocketed over the last twenty-five years at approximately four times the rate of inflation. It is also crucial to view electricity prices in a socio-economic context. For example, the cost of electricity needs to be assessed relative to the disposable income of the household buying it.
Low-income families spend up to twenty percent of their household income on energy, making electricity very unaffordable.
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About half of all South African households (approximately 15 million people) don’t have nearly enough food to eat. This means that the heads of impoverished or working class households (mostly women of Colour) are forced to decide between putting ideally nutritious food on the table and lighting their houses at night. They’re forced to choose between using energy for heating to keep warm during winter or ensuring that their limited fresh food supplies stay cold so that they do not spoil.
I’m part of a group of researchers who use the term energy racism to describe the systemic oppression that prevents Black working class people from accessing the electricity they need to survive and prosper.
South Africans have been protesting for decades about high electricity prices. Why hasn’t the problem been solved?
There are weaknesses in South Africa’s democratic process. Municipalities (local government) responses to the concerns and demands of communities tend to be shortsighted and inadequate.
Currently, the major political parties in South Africa focus mainly on obtaining consensus at the polls through elections every five years. The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is overseeing a “National Dialogue” which he claims will allow the voices of ordinary people to be heard in the corridors of power.
It’s been designed to appear as an inclusive and democratic process. However, based on my previous research, I believe that hidden beneath the surface, government has largely already decided the agenda and a set of policies that the dialogue will recommend.
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The South African government is continuing to rely on market-oriented, neoliberal policies which serve profit at the expense of the working class. This guarantees that electricity prices will remain extremely high. It also means that the government will continue to lack interest in proactively engaging those very communities about the cost of electricity.
It is useful to remember what happened in September 2011 in Thembisa. About 2 000 residents went to the streets to protest against electricity cuts. Schools were closed, at least 100 residents arrested for public violence, and rubber bullets fired at protestors by police.
When the residents of Thembisa shut down their area again recently, the Mayor, undoubtedly aware of this history, wanted to avoid a similar situation. This gave residents an advantage – they were aware that protests would jolt the authorities into a favourable response.
This means that when local government does not take the initiative to discuss important matters like the price of electricity with residents, communities will inevitably create their own formations through which to mobilise and influence local politics and beyond.
How effective are protests against high prices of basic services?
Protests are often an immediate response to desperate communities faced with an acute economic crisis. The recent protest in Thembisa is also part of a broader trend of protests and collective action around the lack of electricity in townships and informal settlements in other parts of Gauteng.
For example, my research over six years in the informal settlement of Thembelihle in the south west of Johannesburg, found that people burned to death in their shacks because local government had failed to provide electricity. Residents had no alternative but to rely on imbawula (a homemade brazier). This was coal and wood in an oven or tin connected to a makeshift pipe to let smoke out. Many shacks caught fire as a result.
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They negotiated with authorities for more than 10 years. Still, Thembelihle residents had no effective way to access the levers of decision-making authority which could electrify their homes. So they accessed power on their own terms, forcing authorities to the negotiating table using protest.
Following a three-week occupation in 2015, the government conceded to the basic demands to formally electrify a relatively small piece of land where they lived. A sizeable amount of R323 million would electrify 7000 homes.
The politics of a community struggle which had once been criminalised and excluded from the halls of power was now enshrined in policy.
What does the recent Thembisa electricity price protest tell us?
It demonstrates that the most effective way for people to get the government to implement pro-poor decisions is not by voting or attending national dialogues hosted by presidents and parliamentarians. It is by organising in communities and engaging in mass actions which force those in power to concede to the people’s demands.
The recent protest also tells us that impoverished and working class residents cannot and should not be forced to pay more than they can afford for basic services. The municipality held Integrated Development Plan and budget meetings with residents a few months before the protests where they revealed the new electricity prices. But these meetings did not seem to acknowledge that the people of Thembisa could not afford to pay.
The mayoral decision to suspend the new electricity charges in Thembisa demonstrates that when basic services fail communities, protests work. They also just might be the only reliable means by which ordinary people can access the levers of government policy.
Luke Sinwell works for the University of Johannesburg
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