New Brighton protests a reminder of the Bay township riots of 1976

I salute Solomzi, my Uber driver of Wednesday, who used his wisdom and discretion to get us out of an extremely dangerous situation – going back and finding a detour to get me home safely.

We unexpectedly encountered fires and virtually drove into them burning in the vicinity of New Brighton SPAR, entering from the Sheya Kulati freeway. These fires were huge. Ferguson Road (and further up its side roads, Qgamlana and Madala roads), Sheya Kulati Drive, Mendi Road, Avenue A and Ferguson Road (towards Ntshekisa and Deal Party) were all set alight with huge fires stoked by burning tyres.

Most of the people who I saw running with more tyres and burning the streets were young children, aged from 10 years upwards, obviously led by adult community members.

This kind of community outrage reminded me of the 1976 riots in New Brighton.

At that time I worked at Empilweni Hospital for a short period, and witnessed the raging fires and billowing smoke in all directions of the city’s townships.

Wednesday’s outrage was apparently caused by the extremely frustrated residents from Dubula Street and Mendi Road, New Brighton, not having electricity for the second week now.

We also experienced the same kind of frustration at the Railway Flats, New Brighton, after we had no power between Friday morning at 7.30am and mid-morning on Tuesday.

There is not only frustration and discomfort caused by such prolonged power outages, but it’s extremely costly to already impoverished community members who had to discard their refrigerated and frozen foods that go rotten due to having no electricity.

And no notifications went out from the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality around the power outage.

Strangely the media is not reporting about the electricity outage and Wednesday’s terrible fires in New Brighton. Annette du Plessis New Brighton resident