The response was quite interesting. The venue was in the Garsfontein area, a traditional suburb, and more than 30 residents from this community were there and six of them were more than willing to become energy auditors. From Mamelodi, which is about 14 kilometres away, and from the neighbouring Woodhill, a luxurious “gated community” or golf estate, there was nobody.

The Garsfontein community is already engaged in different projects and the electricity reduction project benefits from the fact that a strong network already exists. Electricity prices have risen sharply over the last few months and awareness of the cost of electricity is high. It seems that residents will strongly support the effort to reduce electricity usage, because it transforms one from a victim of the “system” to an actor who can take action.

Mamelodi is a bit far away from Garsfontein and this problem was not overcome by the fact that we provided transport. During the previous week, we did make arrangements for the Saturday meeting with residents that we visited, but I suspect that they afterwards felt that they had already heard what we had to say and did not see the reason for attending the meeting also. The reason they gave on Saturday why they could not attend anymore was that they had to attend funerals. That is a very important activity in Mamelodi, more important than anything else. I expect that there will be many who attend if we have a meeting in Mamelodi at a convenient time, and that there will be enough people who are willing to become energy auditors. There may perhaps be a few individuals from the other two communities who may attend a meeting there also.

In Woodhill I think that we will have to approach individuals who may become interested. Some may even become activists. There are already a few such individuals who wanted to attend, but one was overseas at the time, another had an appointment, etc.

The question that remains is: what should be our approach to make this a joint venture between the three communities?

The meeting itself went very well. The presentation by Erwin and Robert was followed by a lively discussion where Andreas, Emile and Lothar made valuable contributions. Mark facilitated and people appreciated the input and the possibilities that were opened up. Many residents switch the geyser off during each day, and were happy to hear that it was not necessary: the important thing is that the temperature must be between 55 an 60 degrees, and most are much higher than that. The fridges are also much too cold, wasting a lot of energy. Few people knew how much we can save by switching off appliances that are on standby. Energy saving has become an interesting topic to experiment with and discuss with each other as a result of this session.

NOVA has been told that behaviour change is the most cost effective way to reduce domestic electricity use, but we did not know what that exactly meant: what behaviour change is needed, how must reduction be measured and how must the behaviour change be brought about? This project has helped us to get a grip on these questions.

We have a much better idea now of the type of changes in behaviour that would be effective in reducing domestic electricity use in three typical South African communities, and we know how to improve our understanding in future.

We are well on our way to being able to measure the effectiveness of these changes.

We are also beginning to learn a little bit about the way to bring about behaviour change. On Saturday it became clear that behaviour change is a social process: there is a lot of information already available on the internet, but people do no make use of it on an individual basis. When they are involved in a process where the community – even a small part of the community – engage with the issues and where they get personal guidance on what to do, they can become very strongly motivated. I observed the same thing in myself!

Attie van Niekerk