Dear Hon. Dereleen,

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to you as a deeply concerned resident of Rustenburg, requesting your urgent intervention regarding the ongoing electricity crisis in our town.

Rustenburg is without electricity more often than we have it. At present, we are entering day two of yet another outage, after only having power for approximately 12 hours, which followed a four-day outage before that. This has unfortunately become a recurring and unacceptable pattern.

The situation in Rustenburg has reached national attention, we have been featured on SABC News, reported on across multiple newspapers, and are trending on social media. Despite this, there appears to be no meaningful improvement or accountability from our local municipality, which is clearly unable to deliver basic services to the community.

Personally, I have spent over R3,000 on petrol for my generator this month alone just to cope. I acknowledge that I am privileged to even have that option, many residents sit without power, without generators, for days on end. Meanwhile, we are still expected to:
- Pay full municipal bills
- Replace spoiled food repeatedly
- Absorb rising costs simply to survive

This is not sustainable and not fair on the residents of Rustenburg.

We are exhausted, financially strained, and losing confidence in the municipality’s ability to govern and deliver essential services. I am pleading for your assistance in any way possible, whether through parliamentary intervention, oversight, or engagement with the relevant authorities, to help bring stability and accountability to this town.

Rustenburg residents deserve reliable electricity and basic service delivery. We can no longer continue like this.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I sincerely hope you will be able to assist us.

Kind regards,
Monique Alberts-Botha
Rustenburg

Please see below breakdown for reference from Councilor Adri of the DA

I gave these stats through to the media and the human rights commission.

Very scary

January

• 4 Jan — 21:42 → 23:28 (1h 46m)
• 5–6 Jan — 00:32 → 19:02 (42h 30m)
• 7 Jan — 08:14 → 10:54 (2h 40m)
• 11–14 Jan — 22:03 → 16:53 (66h 50m)
• 19 Jan — 05:37 → 07:46 (2h 9m)
• 25 Jan — 00:25 → 01:06 (41m)

Total: 116h 36m

February

• 13 Feb — 15:08 → 21:27 (6h 19m)
• 17 Feb — 01:49 → 03:47 (1h 58m)
• 27 Feb — 13:07 → 19:35 (6h 28m)

Total: 14h 45m

March

• 7 Mar — 01:12 → 13:55 (12h 43m)
• 10–11 Mar — 00:22 → 07:16 (30h 54m)
• 11 Mar — 07:30 → 09:06 (1h 36m)
• 16 Mar — 17:08 → 17:33 (25m)
• 18–19 Mar (1) — 23:40 → 01:45 (2h 5m)
• 19 Mar (2) — 02:31 → 08:12 (5h 41m)
• 21 Mar — 15:59 → 16:11 (12m)
• 25 Mar — 12:16 → 12:54 (38m)
• 29–30 Mar — 02:09 → 11:24 (33h 15m)
• 30 Mar — 11:45 → 12:02 (17m)

Total: 87h 46m

April

• 9 Apr — 23:30 → 13 Apr 11:00 (65h)
• 13 Apr — 20:00 → 14 Apr 18:20 (22h 30m)
• 17 Apr — 02:00 → 20 Apr 02:00 (72h)

Totaal: 159h 30m

General total

378h 37m

Councillor Adri