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A South African town has been left fuming after a legal battle with a state-owned power utility forced its solar plant to dump desperately needed electricity in a country suffering a record energy crisis.
Frankfort, a farming community of around 5,800 people located 140 kilometres (90 miles) south of Johannesburg, started using locally produced energy in February to lessen the impact of crippling nationwide power cuts that can last up to 12 hours a day.
But that didn’t go down well with beleaguered monopoly Eskom, resulting in a court case, which the firm won on a technicality last month — compelling locals to sit in the dark during outages like everybody else.
“They can’t produce any electricity and we are not allowed to use the electricity that we produce. It doesn’t make sense,” Hans Pretorius, a local cereal farmer, told AFP.
The case reflects some of the frustrations at the country’s energy crunch, with critics saying it is emblematic of the problems faced by private businesses grappling for solutions.
If they are not going to allow us to use the solar… or to use our own electricity, we don’t have any choice, we will have to take the law into our own hands,” warned…
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