Walking into Eskom’s R1 billion abandoned housing project in Mpumalanga sends a shiver down your spine because it seems like a ghost town. In the dark, empty stairwells and along the cracked concrete corridors, you feel as though you’re starring in your own horror movie.
Ghosts of taxpayer money past
Where are the 400 employees and their families from the nearby Kusile power plant who should be filling these flats and halls with gossip and laughter? They have been replaced by weeds and overgrown grass.
The sense of loss and waste hung heavy in the air… the ghosts of taxpayer money past.
Known as the Wilge Residential Development outside Emalahleni, it was meant to be a minitown for the workers at the massive Kusile power station. The project started with a cost of R258 million in 2012 but it escalated to more than R1 billion and was abandoned around 2019.
It’s approximately 10 years since the project was left to rot and it now resembles a haunted city.
When walking through the dilapidated fence, most of it taken down – probably by those who have been looting the building material – the yard looked like veld with cow dung, heaps of gravel and hardened bags of cement scattered in the middle of the flat blocks.
As we entered that dark corridor, my colleague kept advising me to walk softly and avoid making a noise as we were told that there were security guards looking after the flats. Inside those buildings, there was no life apart from huge birds that flew away when they saw us. Footsteps could be heard, but nobody appeared.
We kept on peeping through the broken windows, checking who was making the sound, but there was no-one. Eventually, we saw a man wearing a black jacket sneaking into one of the blocks where we had been a few minutes ago. The man was either a security guard or somebody who came to steal.
Inside some of the flats were footprints, indicating people wearing work boots had been inside the building. The roofs of some flats were vandalised and the windows had been removed, while others were broken.
R1 billion housing project decaying
Walking out of the buildings, I couldn’t help but think about the thousands of people who are in need of houses while this huge housing project is decaying. R1 billion would pay for a lot of houses for the homeless.
Driving away, we saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow towards us. He said he was one of the construction workers who worked for one of the companies that were building the flats.
“Now I am unemployed,” he said. “I used to work here and I stay around here. I worked here when we were preparing the construction and later Livero Construction took over. When the project was about to be completed, the rumours surfaced, claiming the project had failed.
“All the managers who were responsible for the construction disappeared. The beneficiaries were ready to move in, but they were told the place was not safe.”
Buildings vandalised
A resident, who asked not to be named fearing reprisal, said community members were vandalising the structures by stealing the building material.
“At first, there were no security guards, which is why people were stealing. Now there are security officers, but they are also vandalising instead of protecting the area.
“For example, you guys went in there and managed to take pictures, but they did not see you. Yet they claim that they are patrolling in the area,” he said.
Some years ago, Eskom said it planned to hand over the flats to the department of human settlements, but that never happened. Eskom spokesperson Daphne Mokwena did not respond to the questions concerning the project.
In November 2024, Mokwena said Eskom was negotiating with the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) about investigating the matter. SIU spokesperson Selby Makgotho could neither deny nor confirm the meeting. Makgotho said the unit did not investigate.
‘Officials need to be held accountable’
DA spokesperson on energy and electricity Kevin Mileham said: “Those flats are standing empty and have been that way for more than 10 years.
“Remember that these flats were budgeted at R770 000 a unit and they were abandoned when the costs ballooned to R2.5 million rand per flat.
“The project was abandoned and when they came to the portfolio committee on public enterprises in parliament, they said that they were going to enter into negotiations with the department of housing,” Mileham said.
Themba Godi, leader of the African People’s Convention and former parliamentary standing committee on public accounts chair, said: “When the project started, there were officials assigned. Those are the people who should account. There was a project manager and there was a budget. What happened? Who were the contractors? Why did they leave?
“Those are simple, straightforward questions, but this is part of the common fruitless and wasteful expenditure, lack of transparency and accountability that has seen Eskom burdened with almost unsustainable debt because it has been under siege from its employees and contractors for the longest time.”
Public projects turned into ‘jackpots’
Wayne Duvenage, CEO of Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse, said: “This matter is a classic case of poor project governance, weak oversight, procurement irregularities and the absence of consequence management, which are common features in many large state infrastructure failures in South Africa.”
The warning signs of escalating costs without delivery is a clear indication of poor leadership, more so that construction appears to have continued long after it should have been clear the project was going off the rails, Duvenage said.
“This points to failures in internal controls and oversight. Once again, state entity management and leadership have failed us.”
The uMkhonto weSizwe party Mpumalanga leader Busisiwe Mkhwebane said there were tendencies to turn public projects into “jackpots” for connected parties.
“That the flats were never occupied and are now crumbling into a ghost town points to the project becoming unviable, with costs piling up.”
