There has been an uproar on social media over how ZETDC the subsdiary of ZESA in charge of maintaining the grid is handling faults. There has been a recent spike in faults due to the very wet weather Zimbabwe is going through. Thoughout it all ZESA power has been erratic and their hydrophobic grid often develops a fault at the sight of dark grey clouds. Rain often means a blackout.

If you are lucky power only goes out for the duration of the rainfall episode and is restored as soon as it stops raining. Often though this is not the case and sometimes neighbourhoods have to spend days without power or in the case of some Kuwadzana 5 residents weeks. Most of these faults are due to feeders, transformers, substations and underground cables being damaged during storms.

Rich neighbourhoods get all the love while the ghettos are left in the dark

People are not happy with how ZESA seems to be only interested in faults that develope in richer neighbourhoods while poorer neighbourhoods are often seemingly ignored. Whenever a fault develops in upper areas such as Northen suburbs the ZESA social media handles are often quick to mention in and often these faults seem to be resolved faster.

On the other hand, high-density suburbs are greeted with deafening silence. Residents spend days without even knowing what is going on. Last year ZESA introduced a daily fault list. That list has since been abandoned for some reason. The list was last updated in January and even then the updated were more infrequent compared to the regular updates in December.