Elections 2026 | Meriting families demand electricity after deadly illegal connections

Health-e News Elections 2026 | Meriting families demand electricity after deadly illegal connections 64-year-old Josephine Nyama says when she received a call from neighbours at 6am on New Year’s Day, she heard the shocking news that her brother had been found dead on live wires used for illegal electricity connections in Meriting, Lenasia South, in Gauteng.

“I was shaking, I lost my thinking for a second,” she says.

“I asked my daughter and other family members to go and identify if it was him.” Her daughter returned and confirmed it was her brother, Steven Nyama, who was 67 at the time of his death.

A mere four months later, in May this year, Nyama’s three-year-old granddaughter was also electrocuted while playing with friends at a neighbour’s house.

The child touched a fence that was in contact with a live wire from an illegal electricity connection.

Neighbours managed to pull her away.

“Luckily neighbours were able to rush and remove her from the fence, I almost lost her as well,” Nyama says.

Nine deaths reported this year Nyama says her brother’s death has affected her mental health.

“After losing my brother I was never the same.

I survived on alcohol almost every day to numb the pain.

My brother was my support system.

We were close and looked after each other.

My family is incomplete.” Meriting Phase 2, an extension of phase 1, is an informal settlement that has been without electricity since it was established in 2017.

Some residents connected illegally to the electricity network in Phase 1.