• Residents at Munyaka Estate took action by blockading the entrance following a week-long power failure.
• Property owner Balwin Properties was granted a court order to interdict the protest.
• Balwin Properties reported a six percent increase in revenue for the financial year and said it was investing in backup power solutions at its active developments.

Last week, residents at Munyaka Estate in Midrand grabbed headlines after enduring a week without electricity. Fed up tenants of the estate took to setting up camping chairs and braaing in a bid to block the entrance to the estate.

The protest arose after a fault at Buccleuch substation triggered a week long outage.

The luxury estate is owned by Balwin Properties which took issue with the protest by residents. So much so in fact, that it was granted a court interdict to stop residents from protesting on Friday per a report by EWN.

While Balwin Properties doesn’t supply power to the estate independently – that is Eskom’s job of course – residents were noticeably upset at the firm’s apparent hands off approach to resolving the issue. Given that prices for properties in the estate start at R999 900 and take the form of 99-year lease agreements rather than outright ownership, one could understand why residents would be upset.

This morning, days after bringing protesting residents at Munyaka Estates to heel, Balwin Properties reported a six percent increase in revenue for the financial year ending 28th February 2023.

“The construction of quality apartments in secure estates with modern lifestyle facilities continued to be a key differentiator in the South African residential property market with 2 788 apartments handed over to clients in the reporting period,” Balwin Properties told residents.

Profit increased by 20 percent to R437.4 million.

“Home buyers continued to support Balwin’s unique product offering, with another pleasing performance for the year, despite challenging macroeconomic conditions experienced in the year, characterised by rising interest rates, inflationary increases, prolonged stages of load-shedding and increasing financial pressures on consumers,” the firm continued.

However, Balwin Properties isn’t blind to the issues its residents are facing.

In its annual results presentation the firm said that among its solutions to address loadshedding was the rollout of solar power energy at “all active developments”. Over the last year, Balwin has installed over 2 000 solar panels at 10 developments. Earlier this year it installed a battery backup at The Reid in Linbro Park.

We suspect that more developers and property managers are going to start investing in backup power solutions for residents. This not only keeps the lights on but it could help attract buyers, or lease holder in some instances through cheaper utility fees.

“Importantly, our solutions are not only reducing our dependency on the national energy grid but also reducing utility costs for our homeowners which we believe is a competitive advantage with rising living costs and erratic energy supply,” chief executive officer at Balwin Properties, Steve Brookes told shareholders.

One has to wonder though, with estates, houses and businesses turning to alternative power in the face of Eskom’s failures, will there be anybody using Eskom should loadshedding ever be resolved? Hopefully government is thinking about this apart of its Just Energy Transition. The wealthy going off grid is all good and well but we can’t then have Eskom bleeding low and middle-income users to make up the lack of customers.