Unable to Purchase Electricity for 7 Years

We have been unable to purchase electricity for 7 Years, we have been through different departments of the city and each time we are given different reference numbers with no assistance. In 2016 we informed the municipality of the closure of our business due to the high electricity tariff that we were under which was small tariff 1 (Commercial) and asked to be downgraded to residential since the business had been closed. Amongst other things that led to the business being shut was that the city made it impossible to have or operate our business, They once slapped us with a R22K fine saying that our electricity was *******, meanwhile, it was the same municipality people who came to do our connections and in their last visit they said that they will come back as they picked up that our electricity was being ****** by ******* connections from nearby squatters. Since then we have never seen them coming back to fix the issue, but we have had to close down our only income as we were unable to pay the exorbitant fees on fines by the city due to failure to do the right thing regarding our line and the surrounding nearby area. We have been to every department and every time a ticket is created, we would get calls from the city that never went anywhere because each time a new person on a new ticket will act like they will assisting, but unfortunately, they will disappear, just the same as everyone else has done from the city. They asked us to do an affidavit stating that we really closed the business, post that they would send their inspectors to check if the business was indeed closed. The inspectors came to check, but till this day nothing has been done, however, we still haven’t been able to purchase electricity and have been without it since 2016, but have been at the mercy of our neighbours who allowed us to connect a line to their houses. I recently went to their Plumstead offices in which a new ticket/ reference number *** was created and all the system you could see all the tickets dated back to 2017. On the 10th of August 2023 they sent someone from evaluations to come verify again that the business is closed and took pictures and after that we got a call that we need to pay R9500 in service fees for them to be able to downgrade us to residential, Mind you, since the closure of the business, we our household currently has no income and the same municipality (Working for the people) is expecting us to pay so much money, after travel fees and communications to the City with no assistance where and how are we expected to come up with so much money?