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Cape Town - Households say non-payment for electricity is unacceptable, but feel protesting against high prices could be condoned at times, revealed the General Household Survey on Energy released on Thursday.
The poll found that from the households surveyed, 96.8% reported non-payment for electricity is unacceptable, with 98.6% saying stealing electricity cables is unacceptable.
Respondents also gave input on perceptions of protests and 83.2% felt protesting against high electricity prices could be condoned sometimes or always.
The survey found that South Africans are spending less electricity on cooking.
"While 98.2% of electrified households used electricity for lighting, the proportion dropped to 84.5% for cooking," the report said.
"This drop is significant as electricity use for lighting is estimated to account for only about 10% of the energy consumed by poor households, while cooking, and space heating, is estimated to account for most of the remainder [90%] of the total energy demand."
The survey shows improvements in the number of households who have access to electricity. Between 2002 and 2012, the percentage of households with access to electricity increased from 77.1% to 85.3%.
There were, however, still over a million South African households who were not connected to the electricity grid by last year.
Over half-a-million people accessed electricity either informally, or illegally.
The 30 000 respondents who took part in the survey were also asked about the quality of electricity supply.
"The percentage of households that rated the quality of electricity supply services they received as good declined from 67.4% in 2010 to 61.6% in 2012 while the percentage that rated it as poor increased from 5.7% in 2010 to 9.4% over the same period."
