Heavy vehicles barricade entrances to Lydenburg
All the access roads to Lydenburg and the town’s entrances were blocked by heavy vehicles on Monday November 15 from 04:00. Protests were still ongoing on some of the roads by Wednesday November 17.
Mine employees could not leave for work in time and some parents were not able to take their children to school before mid-morning.
The R37 (Burgersfort Road) was blocked as the vehicles parked across both traffic lanes.
This was also the case on the R540 (Dullstroom Road) and the R36 (Ohrigstad Road) on the other side of town.
The trucks also blocked Voortrekker Street, the main road going towards the Long Tom Pass, at 05:00.
The Lydenburg SAPS and Lydenburg Traffic Department were trying to find tow trucks to move the vehicles out of the way. The drivers had disappeared, taking their keys with them.
An organisation known as the Lydenburg Unemployment Forum (LUF) took responsibility for blocking the roads on social media. Pompies Ledwaba of the Mashishing Civic Coalition (MCC) had some insight into the reason behind the LUF protests.
He said the forum was trying to gain momentum for its cause to receive equal employment opportunities.
The MCC and LUF share similar ideologies.
“Protests like today’s, blocking the town, brings awareness to the unemployment plight. Some mines employ workers, both permanently and contractually, through the Thaba Chweu Local Municipality’s local economic development programme. The problem is that these positions are never available to the local community of Mashishing. Positions are only made available to members of certain political parties. This is at the expense of the entire community. The same thing happens with tender systems and contracts. The Mashishing community never gets the opportunity to obtain permanent employment,” said Ledwaba.
On Monday and Tuesday September 27 and 28, hundreds of people were affected when heavy vehicles blocked the entrance to The Boulders complex in Lydenburg (Steelburger/Lydenburg News, Thursday September 30).
