Alleged electrical cable thieves were found burnt beyond recognition in two separate incidents on Monday and Tuesday in Johannesburg. In the first incident, City Power technicians responding to an outage in Nancefield, Lenasia, discovered a body that was burnt beyond recognition and in Ferndale in Randburg, community members were left in the dark after a body was found burnt beyond recognition at a substation on Tuesday.

City Power spokesperson Isaac Mangena said technicians responded to a logged power cut call in Ferndale on Tuesday. He said technicians went to check what caused the outage and found a body inside. "Due to the incident, residents were without power on Tuesday and there was no still power on Wednesday because some of the equipment within the substation was burnt during the vandalism. We will only do the assessment on the damage after the scene has been handed back to us and then do repairs," Mangena said.

Mangena said technicians were replacing a cable in Lenasia when they came across a dead body. Mangena said the two deceased are suspected to be part of a group that has been vandalising the power utility's infrastructure. "We recorded 15 cases of vandalism between Friday last week and Tuesday. Six of those cases were in Randburg, seven in Roodepoort and two around Lenasia. Some were just acts of sabotage as they vandalised our infrastructure without taking anything," he said.