An alarming phenomenon has taken hold in Johannesburg over the past several months: Dozens of our readers have reported being extorted and intimidated by City Power and Eskom employees, contractors and subcontractors, who have turned up at their homes and cut or threatened to switch off their electricity if they don’t shell out sometimes exorbitant amounts of money for power that they, as tax- and ratepayers, are already paying for. Stories from across the city and its wildly unequal socioeconomic landscape highlight how universal this problem is becoming. Daily Maverick has come up with a way for residents to push back.