02/11/2026
ELECTRICITY COSTS KEEP SOARING.
Thousands of Cape Town households now owe the City money before they switch on a single light. The City calls it a "Service and Wires Charge".
How can this charge be justified?
The City buys power in bulk, mostly from Eskom, and resells it to the public.
This function must be seen as a public trust, not a private business. Yet the City prices electricity with add on levies. Worse still, it has become one of the least transparent parts of its budget.
A Home User customer, meaning anyone in a property valued above R1 million, now pays a fixed charge of R368.96 a month before VAT. With VAT that is R424.30, every month, whether the house uses one unit or one thousand.
In July 2025 the same charge was R339.89 before VAT. This is a rise of roughly 68% in two years.
There is also a levy on families in the R500 000 to R1 million band. Previously they were spared a fixed charge. They must now pay R74.77 a month including VAT.
Access to the grid is billed separately from the power that flows through it.
The City says the fixed charge recovers the cost of keeping the grid available and stable. That can only be partly true.
Residents, however, are not given a plain cost-of-supply breakdown that would let them test the claim. A charge you cannot interrogate is a charge you cannot and must not consent to.
Electricity is being taxed by another name.
The fixed charge is only the visible part. Buried in the tariff is an "unregulated" component of 11.45c per kWh, used to fund street lighting. Did you know that?
Non-residential customers also pay a 29.65c per kWh contribution to the rates account on every unit they buy. Businesses pass that cost on to consumers in the price of bread, transport and rent.
The City's own budget annexure puts the electricity contribution to the rates account at R1.27 billion for 2026/27.
In other words, more than a billion rand collected through electricity bills is spent on things that are not electricity.
Property rates exist for that purpose and are debated openly.
Electricity surcharges are not.
Finding any of this information requires patience.
The 2026/27 draft budget was released with 39 annexures, which Daily Maverick described as almost impossible to digest without AI assistance.
Transparency is not achieved by publishing everything. It is achieved by publishing what matters in a form that ordinary ratepayers can read and comprehend.
In April 2026 a full bench of the Western Cape High Court declared the City's 2025/26 fixed charges for water, sewerage and city-wide cleaning unlawful and invalid.
The challenge, brought by SAPOA and AfriForum, targetted the City's decision to link fixed charges to property values. The court found them inconsistent with the Constitution, national legislation and the City's own tariff by-law.
That judgment did not deal with electricity. The logic, however, is the same.
Whether a household pays R424.30 or R74.77 a month for the same wire depends on what the municipal valuer says a house is worth.
A pensioner in a modest Rondebosch East home that has climbed past R1 million in value pays the higher charge on the same cable as the household next door that is worth a lot more.
Is the Service and Wires Charge a fee for a service, or a property ta ?
What the Constitution demands
Section 152 of the Constitution requires local government to be democratic and accountable, and to provide services in a sustainable manner.
Section 153 requires a municipality to structure its administration, budgetting and planning to give priority to the basic needs of the community.
Neither section permits a municipality to treat an essential service as a revenue stream that residents cannot look into.
Accountability begins with full disclosure. The Service Delivery Party would require the City to:
1. Publish an annual, plain-language electricity statement showing what the City pays Eskom and other suppliers, what it collects and where every rand of surplus goes.
2. Publish the cost-of-supply study behind each fixed charge, so residents can test whether the Service and Wires Charge reflects real network costs.
3. End the practice of setting electricity charges by property value, and move cross-subsidies into the rates account where council must defend them openly.
4. Lower the cost of power itself through new generation, better use of Steenbras, household heat-pump and solar finance, and a Cape Town Community Energy Bond that lets residents own part of the supply.
Residents and SDP are not asking for free electricity.
We are all asking for transparency.
Vote for the SDP on the second ballot paper so that we can fight for cheaper electricity for all.
