Anonymous from Princess writes:
Just a short comment on your article Precious resources wasted on the front page of Roodepoort Record of 19 March – to give more perspective on that situation.
The section of the road mentioned is in poor condition because of tyres that had been burnt on the road during demonstrations by that community many months ago. The tar surface of the road had been destroyed because of the burning tyres and it has since deteriorated. Some businesses close by (alongside that road) had since moved to other premises in “safer” areas, because of these violent demonstrations that became a frequent occurrence.
The people of that community thus destroyed the road themselves. A few of them are now exploiting the situation by doing so-called “repairs” to the road and expecting the road users to pay them for it. I have personal experience where they were trying to force the road users to pay them, and I had personally been threatened by one of them for not paying him. Luckily there were cars behind me and I was able to escape the situation whilst I saw in my rear-view mirrors how they tried to exploit the next cars.
These “repairs” to the road and the exploiting have now been going on for several months. The “repairs” are an ongoing (daily) thing and their main objective seems to be to keep the road in a bad condition so that their daily exploitation can carry on. It thus seems that these are the people who are threatening and stopping the authorities from making permanent repairs to the road, because it will end their money-making opportunity.
Is our government and responsible authorities really so spineless that they allow a few opportunists to control them by hijacking the road?
Many motorists, including myself, are now simply avoiding that section of the road, even if it means we have to travel a few kilometres further via other roads.
