The three-week-long blackout in Balfour, Mpumalanga, was the result of a transformer failure. (Waldo Swiegers/Getty Images)
- Balfour residents endured weeks without electricity, causing some of them to incur substantial costs from alternative power sources.
- Businesses also suffered, with some needing to close during the blackout.
- Eskom acknowledged the outage on 24 August, almost a week after it began, attributing it to the failure of a transformer.
For weeks, the town of Balfour in Mpumalanga was plunged into darkness, leaving its residents in a state of chaos and uncertainty. Businesses shuttered their doors, families scrambled for alternative power sources, all while the silence from authorities was deafening.
The blackout was the result of a transformer failure, which Eskom conceded to on 24 August, nearly a week after the outage began on 18 August in the Dipaleseng Local Municipality.
While the lights flickered back on 31 August, the effects of the blackout run deep, with residents grappling with hefty generator costs and spoiled frozen goods.
Eskom said the outage was caused by the failure of a dedicated transformer supplying municipal networks.
“Eskom is actively engaging with the municipality to resolve this issue. At this stage, the estimated time for restoration is not available,” the utility said in a statement while the outage was ongoing.
Businesses in despair
Electricity has been restored in Balfour, but residents say they’re still feeling the effects of the outage.
Marselle du Toit, who runs a home-based salon, had to close her nail business.
“It has been horrible. We have been left in the dark, literally, by our municipality, with little to no communication about what is happening, what the plan is going forward, or when they will restore electricity.
“I have a small business, and I have to close it until we have electricity again. I am fortunate enough to have a generator to keep the household running, but it is not cheap to run it even for a few hours a day,” Du Toit said during the outage.
She said she spent R300 per day on diesel.
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Other residents were unable to find alternative sources of electricity and lost significant amounts of frozen goods.
“The situation worsened when a pipe burst on Monday, leaving the community without running water. Municipal workers who were on strike refused to carry out repairs. [Meat supply company] Karan Beef sent their personnel for the second time this week to fix the water issue, but the striking municipal workers chased them away,” Du Toit claimed.
Hettie Baldock, who rents out five apartments, described the time without power as a “nightmare”.
“I have five apartments in my yard, with six tenants. One of them, a teacher at Balfour Combined School, had to go to her parents’ hometown every day, in Villiers.”
Baldock added:
The biggest effects on our house and the tenants were hot water, electricity for our stoves and charging our phones to communicate for work, and a lot of extra diesel for our generator for a few hours a day to keep the meat from getting rotten. So, even if I saved my meat, I had a lot of extra costs on diesel.
She said she spent R3 000 twice a week for three weeks on diesel.
Baldock said many of the pensioners did not have money to buy fresh food.
“This scenario just keeps repeating itself. We have been residing in Balfour for four years, and it just worsens. This is all due to a lack of management of the municipality. The residents pay their accounts, but the money that must pay Eskom is disappearing,” she said.
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Eskom reported multiple power transformer failures in the Dipaleseng Local Municipality over the six years from 2019 to 2024, each replacement costing approximately R9 million.
The utility said it was the municipality’s responsibility to ensure that its networks are free from faults which could damage transformers by installing adequate protection infrastructure.
“To restore supply, the municipality must conduct an audit to identify the root causes of faults within its network. This includes auditing for illegal connections and meter bypasses. Once the assessment and repairs are completed, the damaged equipment will be replaced based on the availability of necessary resources,” Eskom said.
The utility added that it would continue playing its part and engaging with the Dipaleseng Local Municipality, but the municipality must fulfill its obligations to ensure the longevity of the replacement transformers, which have a lifespan of more than 25 years.
News24 sent the municipality a request for comment on Wednesday, which the municipality acknowledged but had not responded to by Friday. Its comment will be added once it is received.
