KEY POINTS
- Cosmo City residents have been without electricity for more than six weeks after an Eskom transformer burnt out in July.
- Eskom blames delays on high demand for transformer replacements across Gauteng, but residents say they’ve been left without answers.
- Families report food losses, safety risks, and school disruptions, while accusing the utility of poor communication and lack of urgency.
Residents of Cosmo City, northwest of Johannesburg, have endured more than six weeks without electricity after an Eskom transformer went up in flames.
The power utility has now begun the process of installing a replacement, finally moving to address the outage that has left households in Extension 5 in the dark since July 31.
The transformer was destroyed after an internal short circuit triggered a fire, according to Eskom spokesperson Amanda Qithi.
She admitted the replacement was delayed because of a province-wide backlog in Gauteng, where rising demand has stretched Eskom’s already thin maintenance capacity. “Our teams are on site and in the process of replacing the transformer,” Qithi said.
Frustration Builds as Residents Wait for Answers
For many in Cosmo City, the outage has gone beyond inconvenience. Families have lost food, security systems have been compromised, and children have struggled to keep up with schoolwork without power at home.
One resident, who asked not to be named, said the community had been left in limbo. “The last update we got was that a technician collected the transformer in Germiston, and installation would happen in August. Nothing happened,” he said. “We went all the way to Eskom’s Megawatt Park for answers but were sent away with no straight feedback.”
Ward 100 councillor Lyborn Ndou has acknowledged the problem but residents insist they’ve been treated as if they don’t matter, despite being paying customers. “Eskom is losing revenue on this, but there’s still no urgency,” the resident added.
The prolonged blackout underscores the pressure Eskom faces as it tries to juggle soaring infrastructure failures with limited resources, at a time when public trust in the utility is already worn thin.
