A deadly gamble, ill-afforded

The theft, alongside widespread cable theft, is a deadly gamble that frequently claims lives and is draining the power giant's coffers of unpaid revenues.

It's a cost that the state-owned supplier can ill-afford, amid a latest crisis that this week pitted the company's chief against the board chairperson in a dramatic power-struggle.

But the SECC has vowed to continue.

"We don't have much money or resources to fight Eskom but physically and emotionally by intensifying and by building more teams on the ground to reconnect, that's when they'll feel the pressure," said Bobo Majhoba, the group's youth leader.

Fourteen years after apartheid fell, South Africa still faces massive inequality amid growing anger at undelivered government promises with basic services remaining out of reach.

A South African investigative television programme recently quoted a leaked Eskom report showing a 35 percent revenue loss in May in the residential sector, mostly due to energy theft and meters that reflect free supply.

Aside from this, outstanding Soweto electricity bills accounted nearly R2-billion of nearly three billion owed, the programme said.

Isaac Lebodi is one of those who says he cannot foot Eskom's bill.

"Now I'm owing them, the arrears, about R6000 but I'm paying them every month R300," he told AFP after his power was cut.

"I can't pay it off because I'm not working. There's no money."

Khumalo was later released and the power restored to the houses in the Soweto street, and Jack said he would have to investigate the incident before commenting.

"It could have been a citizen arrest by our protective services, that is something different," he said.

But with both sides determined not to back down, the struggle for Soweto's electricity seems unlikely to be resolved soon.