CITY POWER TO LAUNCH REGIONAL ELECTRICITY IMBIZOS TO STRENGTHEN CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

City Power is relaunching its social compact with customers through a sustained programme of regional Electricity Imbizos, creating a more direct and meaningful platform for communities to raise concerns, engage with the organisation and work together on solutions to electricity service delivery challenges.

The first Imbizo will take place in Alexandra on Tuesday, 18 August 2026, at the AlexSan Kopano Resource Centre, Cnr 12th Avenue and Selborne Street, from 10h00. This will mark the beginning of a programme that will see City Power convene weekly community engagements across the City over the next two months, with additional Imbizos arranged across its areas of supply within the City.

The Alexandra Imbizo follows an engagement by Acting City Power CEO Charles Tlouane with councillors, management and operational teams at the Alexandra Service Delivery Centre on 7 August 2026, as well as a visit to areas experiencing recurring electricity interruptions. The engagement highlighted interconnected challenges including network overloading, illegal connections, meter tampering, vandalism and theft of electricity infrastructure, low vending levels, and increasing pressure on the network from informal settlements and backyard dwellings.

City Power currently has approximately 40,000 registered electricity customers in Alexandra, of whom only around 1,600 are actively purchasing electricity. This means that only about 4% of registered customers are currently vending, despite the significant demand placed on the network. The number of registered customers may also not fully reflect the actual number of households and businesses drawing electricity in the area, particularly given the growth of backyard accommodation and properties accommodating multiple households, as well as informal settlements where illegal connections may be present.

“These Imbizos are about rebuilding the relationship between City Power and our customers through direct engagement, listening and action. We want to understand the challenges communities experience on the ground, explain what City Power is doing to address them, and importantly, work with residents to identify practical and sustainable solutions,” said Tlouane.

The Imbizos will provide communities with an opportunity to engage directly with City Power leadership and technical teams, while also receiving updates on interventions being implemented in their areas. Issues raised by residents will inform follow-up interventions and programmes, including ward-by-ward service delivery initiatives, Normalisation programmes, Free Basic Electricity (FBE) registrations, cut-off operations to remove illegal connections and revenue collection drives.

The programme will ensure that issues raised during engagements translate into coordinated action. In Alexandra, this includes intensified work around metering, revenue collections, network repairs and normalisation, infrastructure protection and community engagement.
City Power will invite the Executive Mayor of Johannesburg, Cllr Dada Morero, and relevant Members of the Mayoral Committee (MMCs) to participate in the regional engagements, reinforcing the City’s commitment to working directly with communities.

The Imbizos remain a City Power-led initiative, aimed at strengthening accountability and ensuring that customer concerns are connected to concrete interventions.
The Alexandra engagement will also address the importance of responsible electricity use, payment for services and the protection of electricity infrastructure.

City Power currently pays approximately R250 million per month for electricity supplied through the Alexandra network, while approximately R29 million is recorded in electricity revenue from the area.
“We cannot build a reliable and financially sustainable electricity network without our customers. The social compact is therefore about shared responsibility. City Power must listen, respond and improve service delivery, while communities have an important role to play in using electricity responsibly, paying for services and protecting the infrastructure on which everyone depends,” said Tlouane.

City Power will use the regional Imbizos to strengthen sustained engagement with customers and ensure that the concerns raised by communities inform its programmes, interventions and service delivery priorities