Last year the communities residing along the D3810 road from Thomo, Khakhala, Gawula, Ndindani, Mahlathi, and Hlomela villages towards the tar road to Phalaborwa, vowed to withhold their votes if government does not fulfill its promise of building a tar road to these communities. According to Raymond Nkuna, a spokesperson of a concerned group representing the communities, people were allowed to vote on Wednesday, May 29 and no reports of protests in any of the villages was received.

However, Nkuna says that most people did not vote because they are not sure if the government will construct the road as promised. The community says they have been promised the road from 2012 and only in 2019, 3km of the 29.5km stretch from Gawula to Khakhala was tarred. The agreement was that the Road Agency Limpopo (RAL) was going to carry on with the remaining kilometers in the next financial year through to Hlomela village, but that has still not materialised.

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In May this year, three weeks before election day, the Minister of Transport, Sindisiwe Chikunga, visited Ndindani to officially introduce a contractor, Matiko Holdings CC. According to Nkuna the residents were not allowed to ask Chikunga any questions, but they were able to talk to the contractor who promised to start working in the next week.

However, Nkuna says thus far only a fenced site has materialised. There has been no machinery or communication from the contractor ever since. “We are not sure if the government is playing with us and if they were trying to buy our votes by coming here just weeks before the voting day. “Now that the ANC does not have the majority, we don’t know if the dream of a tar road will ever happen,” he concludes. The Herald will update the story as it progresses.