Some road conditions in Standerton area beyond redemption
Sergeant Makabane and Constable Mashinini from Leslie were the men in blue prepared to assist.
The perils of travelling on the R50/Leandra Road is beyond dispute, but fortune can smile on people too.
Beyers Naudé Street in Standerton has a slipway past Pick n Pay and, at one point, the busy Leandra Road forces most drivers to reduce speed, watch attentively for oncoming trucks, watch the rear mirror for an impatient driver, and carefully drive over an uneven surface.
Anybody risking the route in a small sedan will have to navigate massive potholes firstly past Earlybird to find further on, a pothole big enough to damage a biggish tyre from a vehicle fit to travel the road.
A rain-filled pothole is another travesty.
The Standerton Advertiser was en route with a friend to Pretoria on April 3, for an appointment the following day, encountering a massive pothole a few kilometres out of town.
The vehicle took the impact, the driver, however, did not slam on the brakes. She drove at a lesser speed and finally came to a halt next to the road.
Two women then had to change the tyre, which involved finding the jack and removing the enclosed tyre at the back.
At about 11:20, a few coal truck drivers were using the road, some slowing down and taking a look before going on with their journey.
Some would call this a miracle when a police vehicle drove past 10 minutes later.
The officer stopped and the newspaper crossed the road, explaining the predicament and police helped.
Captain Gibi Mtsweni, communications officer of Standerton Police, supplied the names of the two officers, which in the utter disarray of the moment, were not written down.
Sergeant Makabane and Constable Mashinini from Leslie were the men in blue prepared to assist.
The executive mayor of the Lekwa Municipality, Delani Louis Thabethe, said in May last year that road conditions are very bad.
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Thabethe also said that roads had already been identified where repair work would be done, whether patching of potholes or complete upgrading.
The road in front of Pick n Pay, the R50 and Nelson Mandela Drive were singled out.
Johann Mettler, former administrator of Lekwa, previously admitted to erosion of road networks and degradation of municipal roads.
The R23/Johannesburg Road stands in complete contrast to the R50.
