For 20 years Amos Vilakazi’s tuckshop enjoyed decent business with about 300 customers a week and making R3,000 in profit – but it all fell apart nine months ago when a local transformer blew up.
At least 56 homes in Doornkop Ext 4 in Soweto were plunged into darkness and their electricity has not been restored since the explosion. Eskom, their power supplier, hasn’t been able to fix the problem.
The Vilakazis could no longer sell their kotas on a daily basis because of the electricity problem.
Vilakazi, 67, said for his business to stay above water he had to buy eight primus stoves and two gas cylinders. When Sowetan visited his shop on Sunday, it was dark inside and he was using sunlight to run his business. His fridge was empty.
He lives with his wife and five children. All of them are unemployed and rely on the family business as a source of income.
Because of the electricity crisis, the family spent R2,250 on the gas cylinders and R1,360 on the primus stoves. The costs have taken their toll as they sometimes run of stock for the business.
“We are working under difficult conditions. There are times when we would close for two to three days because we do not have enough stock or enough money to buy food items,” said Vilakazi.
Before the outage he would spend R1,050 a week on electricity but now he spends more than R1,400 a week on gas and paraffin.
“We have to buy gas every day to refill the two cylinders and it costs us R190. We also have to buy paraffin every day for the primus stove and two litres of paraffin is R40. We are now forced to spend money we should be saving to buy stock,” said Vilakazi.
“We had a stove where we could use four pots on it and make chips. It took us less than 10 minutes to get the chips ready. Now we are struggling. We only use one pot and it takes 20 minutes to fry the chips. We cannot even make R1,000 a week. We no longer get as many customers like before,” said Vilakazi.
Francina Masopha, 49, who runs a spaza shop, said she has had to pay her four employees half their salaries as a result of the outage.
She said in November last year she bought a generator and spends R28,000 a month on petrol. Her electricity bill used to be just over R1,000.
“Now that it is dark in my shop we no longer allow customers to come inside because they might steal our goods. We sell from the door. I had four employees and now I have three. One left because he could not live on a half salary,” said Masopha.
Gauteng Eskom spokesperson Amanda Qithi yesterday said she needed more time to respond to Sowetan’s questions.
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