Tshwane prepaid meter fines hit R75,000 as 2,339 meters found bypassed
The City says officials never take cash to cancel a fine, as two residents lay criminal complaints and the FF+ raises the matter in two oversight committees.
A prepaid electricity meter in Tshwane that has been bypassed or tampered with can now cost its owner up to R75,000, and the City says it has already found 2,339 of them.
The fine is the sharp end of an enforcement drive the metro has run alongside Eskom, and it lands on the household account rather than on the person who did the work. Of those 2,339 meters, 494 accounts were flagged as second-tier, or repeat, tampering offences. The City has recorded more than R78 million in cumulative costs tied directly to meter tampering inside the metro.
Tshwane is also phasing out its older meters and replacing them with smart prepaid units built to resist tampering and protect municipal electricity revenue.
What residents say is happening
The Freedom Front Plus says its offices are receiving a growing number of complaints from residents who insist they never touched their meters.
The party describes a sequence it says appears repeatedly in those complaints. A resident reports a power fault. A municipal technician arrives without the spare parts needed for the repair, and bypasses the meter to restore supply in the meantime. An inspector then visits the same property and accuses the resident of tampering.
“In many cases, residents claim that these fines are unfounded and legally questionable,” the party said.
The FF+ also says it has received several reports of people telling residents they could make a fine disappear in exchange for cash. Two Tshwane residents have laid criminal complaints with the South African Police Service over alleged irregularities, according to BusinessTech.
The party has taken the matter to the Oversight Committees on Finance and Community Safety, arguing that ratepayers should be shielded from corrupt practice. It has also questioned the position residents are put in, saying the metro expects them to keep a meter installed in a public street secure while forbidding them from moving it or securing it privately. The party calls that an impossible requirement.
The city’s answer
The City of Tshwane’s response is blunt on the cash question. Municipal officials and technicians are never permitted to solicit or accept money to cancel a fine or change meter records, it said.
Fines must be levied against the account through gazetted, approved tariffs, the City said, not through cash transfers or messaging apps. Residents who are approached with such a demand should open a criminal case with SAPS immediately.
Disputes belong with the City itself, lodged through its electricity dispute email address or at the Client Service Centre in the Isivuno Building, rather than with anyone who approaches a resident privately.
Why the drive is running
The scale of the problem nationally is what makes the enforcement politically difficult to slow down. The Department of Electricity and Energy estimates that about 1,7 million customers across the country are using electricity illegally or running bypassed or tampered prepaid meters.
Eskom recorded R8,15 billion in non-technical energy losses attributed to electricity theft over the eleven months between 1 April 2025 and 28 February 2026. Non-technical losses and ghost vending, the sale and use of illegally generated prepaid tokens, have cost up to R23 billion in lost revenue a year. Eskom has targeted 971 distribution feeders worst affected by network overloading and load reduction linked to unauthorised connections and bypassed meters.
That money is revenue the metro and the utility do not have for substations, transformers and cable replacement, which is the part of the story a household feels when the lights go out.
What to do if a technician arrives
The FF+ advises residents to document every interaction with a municipal official, keep reference numbers for every electricity complaint, and photograph the meter before and after any technician works on it. It advises residents never to pay cash to have a fine removed.
The City’s position supports the last point directly. No official may take that money, and a demand for it is a matter for the police.
Source: BusinessTech, Homeowners with prepaid electricity meters face fines up to R75,000 in South Africa
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