Summer-ready: City inspects streetlight work on major routes as year-round work continues

14 December 2025

The City of Cape Town’s Energy Directorate visited teams conducting essential streetlight maintenance and refurbishment along key arterials throughout the metro. This forms part of the City’s continuous, year-round programme to maintain and upgrade public lighting infrastructure.

The City’s investments in the upgrade and maintenance of public lighting infrastructure extend beyond December. It forms part of a continuous programme by the Energy Directorate to enhance safety and visibility throughout the metro.

Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Alderman Xanthea Limberg, joined officials at numerous sites across the city this week, where ongoing streetlight work, including high mast maintenance work took place.

‘We are pleased with the hard work of our teams, which has driven an impressive recovery in our streetlight burn rate, which now sits at 88,8% and is on track to exceed our 90% target. We also extend our appreciation to other stakeholders like the Western Cape Provincial Government, who are actively rolling out their own streetlight repair programme on provincial roads.

‘While teams remain on the ground to attend to infrastructure maintenance and repairs, vandalism and theft of critical infrastructure remain a challenge. Our most recent electricity infrastructure vandalism and theft figures indicate that 805 theft and vandalism incidents were reported during the third quarter of 2025 across all areas, with an estimated repair cost of approximately R16 million. The City’s Area North reported 380 incidents, Area South reported 260 incidents, and Area East reported 165 incidents.

Worst affected districts:

‘We continue to appeal to residents to assist us by reporting any suspicious activities near energy infrastructure to both the South African Police Service and the City so that we can bring an end to infrastructure theft and vandalism. Unfortunately, often as soon as infrastructure has been fixed or replaced, it is vandalised again. The City has deployed security to monitor hotspot areas where possible, replacing copper with lower street value alternatives and we are piloting innovative infrastructure protection tech solutions. The City can’t go at it alone. We rely on our communities to alert us and to help us protect community infrastructure,’ said Alderman Limberg.

Protect Your Power Campaign to tackle R62 million vandalism, theft crisis

The City has spent approximately R62 million in the past financial year on electricity infrastructure maintenance and replacement.

Protect Your Power is a first of a kind campaign which highlights the massive impact of vandalism, theft, and illegal connections that leave our communities, neighbourhoods, and roadways in the dark. The City is calling on all residents to help us Protect Your Power and build safer, brighter communities by reporting any suspicious activity anonymously to the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre (PECC).

Let’s ACT: Protect Your Power
Report suspicious behaviour to the City’s PECC: 021 480 7700

The SAPS remains the lead authority in crime prevention.

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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office