damaged cable no line

About 5 months ago my telkom line went 'crackly' and then died. With difficulty and after many calls (on another line) we managed to report the fault. We were told that there was major cable damage in our area and that it would take some time to replace the 500m of cable. Well it did .... like 4 months! In the interim we continued to receive line rental invoices which we didn't pay because you ca'nt rent a non-existent line! When we tried to explain this sel-evident fact to Telkom they said 'pay the bill and we will sort it out later'. We said NO because we don't trust you to do this without a huge hassle ... If at all. Their response has been to threaten to cut off the now-repaired line and hand us over to a debt collector. We are very happy about this because we are sure the debt collector will see our point of view. What we are not happy about is the fact that we have had no armed-response security for 5 months. But Telkom just don't care, do they?