Enraged community barricades roads

The Maartinshoop Road has been barricaded by the community of Shaga Village using heavy vehicles during the past two weeks. The locals allege that foreign nationals are being favoured over them for mining jobs.

On Thursday January 28, a driver left a heavy vehicle parked across the road and walked away. A group of mine employees was able to gain entry to it at 03:30 and manoeuvred it to the side of the road. The community started barricading the Maartinshoop Road with branches and trees at around 05:30. Another group of mine employees were able to remove those barricades too.

This road allows access to the greater Limpopo mining belt, including Sekhukune, Tweefontein (Samancor), Der Brochen, Helena and Mototolo mines (Anglo American Platinum). “We can’t go on like this. We need to go to work and there are no alternative routes. The barricading of roads sporadically happens every few days. And it has been going on for weeks,” said one of the mine employees.

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“We condemn these actions by the community, because it always puts the drivers of our heavy vehicles in danger. The community are threatening our drivers to barricade the roads. Drivers are then being beaten with sjamboks and verbally abused by the locals if they refuse to block the road and walk away with the keys. Threatening audio clips are being circulated. It is a great concern for us that now, even in 2022, civilians are continuing to attack our drivers,” said Sifiso Nyathi, the general secretary of the All Truck Drivers’ Foundation (ATDF).

The UTDA and ATDF are investigating the issue of foreigners being given work as truck drivers and believe the community target these heavy vehicles too.