According to the community, Premier Stanley Mathabatha pledged to tar the road during a public participation event in 2016. “We have been waiting long for that promise to materialise, but nothing has happened so far. We are here today to tell the municipality to pass our grievances to the department that was supposed to tar that road,” said Solly Mangena, a representative for the community.

Among the demands in their memorandum are water and the construction of a local school to reduce the distance that learners have to travel to attend school elsewhere. The community insists that the government cannot claim that it lacks the funds to establish a school in their area since it has enough money to hire school buses to transport learners to school every day.

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“We are prepared to temporarily cover our kids’ transportation and the government should rather allocate the funds towards building us a school,” he said. “One of the reasons why they do not prioritise building us a school is because someone is benefitting from the tender that is used to hire buses to take our kids to school, and that is unfair because we voted for these people and now, they are turning against us,” he said.

Their memorandum was received by Clr Morris Shiviti who serves in the Office of the Speaker. In his remarks, Shiviti promised to provide answers within 14 days. He thanked the protesters for conducting a peaceful protest, saying their it is commendable. “Some protesters destroy government infrastructure such as burning tyres. It sets us back as we then must set aside funds for road rehabilitation that were allocated for other projects,” he said.