Uphill battle to fund repairs amid Nelson Mandela Bay’s Dark Age

Nelson Mandela Bay’s electricity department is operating without a budget or contract for critical high-voltage infrastructure, owing contractors about R60m.

This comes as the city is scrambling to fund repairs following repeated pylon collapses that have already cost at least R11m.

In the latest incident, the top piece of a pylon snapped on the 132kW Chelsea–Arlington line on a farm in Bushy Park on Wednesday.

So far, it is the third time just in 2026 that a damaged pylon has caused a widespread outage.

And it marks the fifth pylon collapse along the transmission line spanning the city, driven by severe corrosion and deep structural deterioration.

Electricity and energy acting executive director Bernhardt Lamour told councillors during a municipal public accounts committee meeting on Friday that the lack of funds had left the department unable to carry out essential maintenance.

Earlier in March, a rusted transmission tower collapsed overnight on the 132kV Chelsea–Arlington line.

In January, two pylons collapsed along the Greenbushes-Bloemendal line, leaving large parts of the metro without electricity and water for several days.

In August 2025, a pylon on the 132kV Chelsea–Arlington line collapsed.

Residents and businesses will reportedly still have no power for the next couple of weeks while the city works around the clock to rectify the situation.

Lamour told councillors that the Greenbushes-Bloemendal line had cost the metro R7m to repair, while the Arlington line cost R4m.

DA councillor Gert Engelbrecht said the approved adjustments budget had set aside R11m for the refurbishment of pylons, but the city had already spent millions on the collapsed pylons.

“I would like to know exactly how much money we owe service providers in the electricity and energy department because we’ve got contractors who are doing emergency work for us who aren’t getting paid,” he said.

“At this stage, I’m not sure where the CFO is going to get that R4m but if the CFO can’t find that R4m, it adds up to our already massive bill with some of these companies.”

Engelbrecht said the situation could eventually lead to companies declining work because of outstanding debts.

Lamour said the department owed about R60m to the contractor that was busy restructuring the overhead line.

“I said it before, there is no contract, there cannot be a budget.

“There was no budget for high-voltage lines.

“We had to make a plan, and in the revised budget, the CFO reallocated funds to cover the construction work on the lower Bloemendal-Greenbushes line, which amounted to about R7.9m.

“The R4m, we sourced from our own internal budget, and the deviation is being processed currently.”

Engelbrecht said contractors needed to be paid.

“We will need to make a plan there to start paying these guys back because we must keep them here.

“It’s crucial that if pylons fall it’s not going to be a 10-day or five-day exercise any more.

“It’s going to be a couple of months if we don’t have somebody who can attend to our pylons.”

ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom said the crisis demanded immediate attention.

“If we owe them R60m, imagine their commitments to their suppliers.

“Will their suppliers continue to supply them to continue working for us, because if we can’t pay them, they can’t pay their suppliers, and then automatically that is the reason I could understand why we were not now the other day on site to do the work because R60m is outstanding.”

Grootboom recommended that the department urgently secure funding for the Arlington line, even if it required redirecting funds from underperforming departments.

“If we can pay R6m for a picnic in a park, we can pay R60m to save our economy, otherwise we don’t have our priorities straight,” Grootboom said.

“Our collection rate is weak, and 60,000-100,000 households are not paying for electricity.

“So the money is coming from these areas where the power is currently down.

“We’re punishing paying customers and if we keep them in the dark for long we’ll be in trouble.

“I’m recommending you urgently find money in the Arlington line and redirect that money from directorates not performing.

“If the CFO can’t find money he’s no good for us.”

ANC councillor Xolani Notshe questioned what the safety and security directorate was doing to ensure critical infrastructure was protected.

“We’ve seen in other cities, small towns, there will be technologies, other smart tech, cities actively protecting their infrastructure,” Notshe said.

“What is our city doing?

“What is being done about vandalism?

“People are cancelling bookings.

“It’s a real economic issue, a bread-and-butter issue and an employment issue.”

The city fell short of a 95% target of maintenance of its electrical infrastructure, achieving only 77%, according to the 2024/2025 annual report.

Councillors warned that these continued failures could plunge the metro into deeper outages and financial strain.

Grootboom questioned Lamour on how the department determined which lines received maintenance and which were pushed further down the queue.

“Can the department advise how they go about determining which high-voltage line will receive maintenance, or is this all high-voltage lines around the city, because you are aware that Arlington-Chelsea are problematic and they can collapse at any time,” Grootboom said.

“Considering that, were those pylons not part of the maintenance plan, and if they were, what maintenance was required?”

Lamour said: “In terms of the maintenance of the high-voltage (HV) lines, we have a programme in which we inspect the towers.

“The records are being kept and we do ultraviolet inspections on the insulators and the conductors.

“We only have one artisan and one acting artisan in the HV programme line section, and with the absence of a contract, it’s impossible to cover all the high-voltage lines in the city, but going forward we will ensure that there is a budget and contract in place.

“We’re looking forward to improving our reliability on that infrastructure.”

Lamour said the work was not limited to the 132kV lines, but also included the overhead lines such as the 22kV lines in rural areas.

“So, work on the high-voltage lines, due to capacity, and no budget available, nothing was done, only inspections.

“Where vandalism has been discovered, we will try to weld in new pieces to support those structures — that’s on the Chatty/Bloemendal, Bloemendal/Greenbushes line all the way to Summerstrand.

“We have maintenance plans but they’re driven by budget and capacity in terms of contracts.”

During the meeting, Bay chief financial officer Jackson Ngcelwane said he was unaware of the R60m.

“If it’s not in our creditor’s liability register I won’t know about it.”

Ngcelwane said when the city needed to pay a contractor, the expenditure followed proper processes.

“If there is no contract in place, whatever expenditure we do, emergency or not, becomes irregular,” Ngcelwane said.

“At some point, it will have to come here, and the law says, as an official, I must not create irregular expenditure.

“We are not saying an emergency is not important. It’s an emergency, so a deviation has to be approved without a contract.”

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