Durban motorists were hit with a double whammy during peak hour after electricity outages caused chaos and a protest forced police to divert traffic.
|||Durban - Durban motorists were hit with a double whammy during peak hour traffic this morning after electricity outages caused chaos and a protest in Vusi Mzimele (Bellair) Road forced police to divert traffic.
Irate motorists battled through intersections at Springfield, Umbilo, Rossburgh, Morningside and Glenwood, which were affected because of a joint failure on cables linking the Chris Ntuli (Old Fort) Road and Johannes Nkosi (Alice) Street substations.
And an ‘imminent failure’ on another 132kV cable meant that electricity might have to be suspended for up to 16 hours to the Westmead, Mariann Ridge, Hillcrest and Waterfall areas, the city warned.
Emergency teams were assessing the Klaarwater major feeding station and “the general consensus is that this line will need to be switched off within the next two hours to limit and contain the damage” the council said in a statement today.
There was a similar outage on Sunday morning which lasted for three hours.
“Repairs on this line have started in earnest and are only expected to be completed in the next 16 hours, when it will be able to pick up the load feeding the currently affected areas,” the elctricity department said.
Metro police had to divert traffic around Vusi Mzimele (Bellair) and Rick Turner (Francois) roads after angry residents of Mayville’s Ward 30 burned tyres and placed rocks, trees and electricity poles on roads, demanding that their area councillor be removed.
Residents who tried to walk to work were attacked.
Protesters had gathered in Vusi Mzimele Road from 2am, metro police spokesman, Superintendent Sibonelo Mchunu, said. “It’s hard to say what the protest is about because it seems unorganised.”
When the Daily News arrived at the protest this morning some residents watched while more than 50 people marched down Vusi Mzimele Road wielding sticks.
“We went to exile, we fought for the freedom of this country this way,” said protester Mduduzi Sibiya.
“The ANC came into power as a result of the people revolting the way we are doing now. This is the only way our cries will be heard.”
He said they were unhappy with their area councillor, Zanele Ndzoyiya, claiming she had not been voted in by residents and that votes had been rigged during the elections.
“We reported the matter to our regional leadership and they came and they saw for themselves that a large majority of the residents didn’t want Ndzoyiya as their councillor, but she is still in that position,” he said.
When asked for comment, Ndzoyiya referred questions to the ANC.
But she did say that proper processes were in place during her election and said she would not be meeting the local community.
Residents told the Daily News they were expecting to be addressed by someone from the mayor’s office as well the ANC’s Senzo Mchunu today.
Deputy head of high voltage operations at eThekwini Municipality’s electricity department, Raj Dhrochand, said a 132kV cable in the city failed at 6.59am, after which supply was partially restored at 7.34am with full supply back at 8.17am.
“We had a similar joint failure on the same cable a while back so we have requested the help of a cable specialist consultant to do a complete strip down of the cable to find the root cause,” Dhrochand said.
He said the previous failure was a result of vandalism, although he couldn’t confirm what had caused today’s failure as an inspection was still being done.
“After the first failure we inspected the tunnels and found mattresses, so we knew vagrants had been sleeping there. We then sealed the tunnel entrances to prevent access.
“We apologise to all our clients.”
Daily News