Do your job, NERSA – says court in case over Rustenburg electricity supply

AfriForum achieved a major victory on Monday, 6 October, after the High Court in Pretoria ruled that the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) must fulfil its obligations as an energy regulator. The case was won with costs. This follows a long-standing battle to help the residents of Rustenburg access electricity.

Residents of Rustenburg have been struggling with poor electricity supply since 2021. The Rustenburg Local Municipality, which received the power supply license from NERSA, has ignored all attempts to address the problems and has not carried out any maintenance work on the electricity network. This means that there are daily power outages for hours, and over the past few years this situation has worsened. Residents then turned to NERSA to intervene, but the energy regulator was not eager to help.

AfriForum brought a case against both NERSA and the Rustenburg Local Municipality in 2024 to force them to fulfill their responsibilities towards the Rustenburg community. NERSA did not oppose the application.

The Rustenburg Municipality, however, opposed the case and believed that AfriForum was not within its rights to approach the court to request NERSA to do their job. This is after the municipality did not even fulfill its own responsibility towards the community. According to AfriForum, the municipality could have used the funds and time they spent on this court case to provide services to the Rustenburg community.

According to Dalena Beyers, advisor on Local Government Affairs at AfriForum, this victory should, however, create hope for those who live in municipalities where service delivery is also not up to standard.

“The court has confirmed that this poor service delivery by NERSA is a shameful dereliction of duty, and that they must start doing their job within thirty days. This ruling shows that AfriForum is on the right track and that we must continue to stand up for the rights of residents who are being let down by their municipalities and regulators,” says Beyers.

“As the national energy regulator, NERSA has a legal obligation to ensure that licensees provide services that maintain a certain standard and if this does not happen, NERSA must take away the license and give another provider the opportunity to provide the service. Unfortunately, it seems that NERSA is no longer acting in the public interest, which is extremely concerning for AfriForum,” says Beyers.

Judge Nobanda also strongly criticised NERSA in her judgment, saying that the energy regulator had miserably failed to discharge its responsibilities as set out in section 4(a)(7) of the Electricity Regulation Act (4 of 2006). She further said that it is disappointing when the legislature puts statutory bodies in place to manage the government’s constitutional responsibilities to South Africans and these bodies then fail to fulfil their obligations and accept accountability for their failures.

According to Beyers, it is concerning that communities have to go to court just to get state institutions to do their job. “This court application was simply about getting NERSA to look at the Rustenburg Municipality’s electricity supply and act accordingly. That we had to get an order from the High Court to make this happen is actually tragic.”