Eskom cuts slash earning power of Joburg's self-employed

Morena Bila hopelessly sat in the dark yesterday at the Bree taxi rank in central Johannesburg where he runs a tailoring and shoe-fixing business.

The CBD had been hit by load-shedding from 10am to just before noon. When the Sowetan team arrived at the taxi rank, Bila had turned away 10 customers because he could not help them.

The power was scheduled to be restored at 2pm.

Three customers wanted to fix their shoes, which could have earned him R180 each. Two wanted to alter the waist of their pants for R80 each, four others wanted to cut the length of their pants at R50 each and one wanted to alter his pants for R40.

In total, Bila lost R940 in just two hours.

“It is a big loss for me. I rely mostly on the customers that pass by and want their pants or shoes fixed immediately. Those are the people who give me money for food for my children. I take a taxi  to come here and when I return home to my wife and three children, I must have something.

“This is the predicament that I am facing with load-shedding,” he said.

Bila has been running his business for the past 17 years.

He also provides for his mother.

Grace Mncube, who runs a salon in Yeoville, said the impact of load-shedding has been devastating.

“When my clients see that there is no electricity in the neighbourhood, they do not even bother coming. Even those who come, I cannot plait them, so I do not make any money.”

Mike Tilad, who runs a butchery in Yeoville, said he has been using  a generator for lights and to run cash registers during load-shedding.

“I spend about R200 a day on petrol for the generator.. When we lose power, I simply move all the meat to the freezer so that it does not get rotten.

“The challenge is that when power returns, it sometimes causes problems (surges) to my fridge and I can spend as much as R3,000 to fix it. Also, if there is load-shedding at night, people do not come to buy because the area is unsafe,” Tilad said.

Lazarus Mashaba, 41, who runs a hair salon in Orlando East, Soweto, said constant power cuts have led to him not finishing customers’ hairdo on time.

“When I am busy cutting a customer’s hair, we would experience a power cut . I would then close the shop and the customer would have to leave and come back when power is restored. This is frustrating,” said Mashaba.

The salon has been running since 2000 and has two employees. He pays R1,000 rent.

Mashaba, who told Sowetan in February that he hired a generator, for which he pays R1,000 a month, said he stopped using it because he could no longer afford the costs.

He said he gets about 10 customers a day and makes R500 a day. Before the power cuts he would get at most 40 customers a day, from whom he would make between R2,000 and R3,000.

“I am losing customers. I used to get customers from as far as Pretoria, Midrand, Roodepoort and Meadowlands. They no longer want to come here to waste their petrol and [only] to find that there is no electricity.” said Mashaba.

Eskom yesterday announced that load-shedding will be reduced to stage 5 at midnight from stage 6 due to the return four generation units.

Asked about additional measures announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa to address load-shedding in July, his spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said: “The implementation of the measures you refer to announced by the president remains underway under the leadership of the national crisis committee.

“This round of load-shedding is not a reflection of a lack of implementation of those measures...We will announce when the update [of the measures] will be given and all the information will be shared.”

dlaminip@sowetan.co.za,

kokam@sowetan.co.za