BILLING CRISIS: City Power disconnects NGOs helping thousands of vulnerable children

In a drastic escalation of a R44-million municipal billing dispute, City Power technicians, accompanied by two police officers, disconnected the electricity supply to the historic Children’s Memorial Institute (CMI) campus in Parktown, Johannesburg, on Thursday morning, 3 September.

The blanket disconnection has forced the precinct to use emergency generators, triggering a crippling fuel bill of R30,000 a day just to keep critical child-welfare services and an industrial provincial hospital laundry running, according to Dr Dee Blackie, child protection researcher and pro bono campus manager at CMI.

Power has been severed to 22 child-care NPOs, special-needs educational facilities, and a central provincial laundry processing line that serves four major public hospitals and 13 regional healthcare facilities.

Infection control threatened

The industrial laundry facility on the CMI campus, which is next to Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, processes the sterile linen essential for Gauteng’s operating theatres, emergency rooms and acute wards.

The blackout directly threatens operational hygiene at four hospitals: Charlotte Maxeke, Helen Joseph Hospital, Yusuf Dadoo Hospital and Discovery Hospital.

Thirteen clinics and regional facilities are also at risk: Alexandra Clinic, Hillbrow Clinic, Hillbrow Medico Legal, Witkoppen Clinic, Riverlea Clinic, Newlands Clinic, Orchids Clinic, Nincaniwe Clinic, OR Tambo Clinic, TMI Centre, Discovery Dental, Wits Dental, and EMS Joburg.

Vulnerable children

Blackie warned that the blackout immediately threatens daily care, education, and feeding schemes for thousands of vulnerable and neurodiverse children across the precinct:

• 365 learners at the Johannesburg School for Autism: Special-needs children face disrupted routines, disabled elevator access across the four-storey facility, and shut-down sensory therapy equipment.

• 700 children at Afrika Tikkun: The centre provides daily care and two hot meals to hundreds of impoverished children – operations now severely crippled without electricity.

• 1,000 children in after-care and therapy: Children accessing therapeutic support, after-school supervision and what is often their only solid meal of the day are left in the dark.

• 60 children in CMI Early Childhood Development centres: Early learning programme and daily feeding schemes are operating without power for food preparation.

• Childline South Africa: Without grid electricity, Childline’s call-centre capacity has plummeted from handling roughly 800 crisis calls a day to just 250 on backup cellular systems.

• Johannesburg Paediatric Dentistry: Emergency dental care for children suffering from acute pain and sepsis has been halted.

• 18 children at Bophelo Cerebral Palsy Daycare Centre: Daily specialised care and meal services are severely compromised.

Fuel costs skyrocket

Drawing on her years of operational oversight and fuel tracking from previous grid disconnections, Blackie calculated the immediate financial fallout following Wednesday’s fuel price adjustment:

“On Wednesday, 2 September 2026, wholesale diesel in South Africa was pushed up to R30.05 per litre. With grid power cut, the campus is forced to rely entirely on industrial backup generators to survive. This is going to cost a fortune, and wasted money not only for the Gauteng health department, but for donors and NGOs as well.”

The numbers

CMI building operations: Consumes an average of 200 litres of diesel per day to maintain basic emergency services and keep lights on for statutory child protection functions.

Industrial hospital laundry: Consumes approximately 1,000 litres of diesel per day – five times the fuel demand of the entire NPO precinct combined.

The monthly bill: Maintaining generator power across the campus costs an estimated R30,000 per day, translating to R210,000 per week and more than R900,000 per month.

For non-profit organisations whose emergency reserves were already severely depleted following cut-offs late last year, these fuel costs are unsustainable, forcing charities to choose between paying for emergency fuel or delivering essential child-rescue services.

The City of Johannesburg, the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development (GDID), and the Gauteng Department of Health had not responded to Daily Maverick questions by the time of publication. DM