Toll road will take its toll on ordinary citizens
From: LINDA VAN TONDER Amanzimtoti I HAVE always enjoyed Jaundiced Eye, but last week’s column cannot go unchallenged.
The N2 toll road to the Wild Coast wasn’t stymied by “The greenies… ensconced in the wealthier suburbs of SA’s major cities...” but, in part, by the ordinary, put-upon citizens of Amanzimtoti.
Sanral intended to put a toll plaza on the N2 in the middle of Prospecton, an old, paid-for, existing road.
They also intended to put ramp plazas on many of the exits and entrances to ‘Toti.
As the town is built on either side of the N2, this would have meant paying a toll to go to bowls, church, the shops, work or take the kids to school or the doctor!
They told us quite openly that the (unsolicited) project was not economically viable without milking the folk of the Upper South Coast. The total traffic count from Winklespruit to Isipingo was greater than the total count from Winkle all the way to Transkei. We, then, were to provide the money.
We were not championed by elitist tree-huggers but by industry, namely Toyota SA, Umbogintwini Industrial Complex, Southgate Industrial Park and SA Breweries. The extra costs to them and their workforce would have been considerable.
Even the ANC-led municipality objected to it.
If the Eastern Cape in general and the Wild Coast in particular are shambolic ruins, then lay the blame at the door of the people who are in charge, not the hardworking stiffs of Amanzimtoti and environs who refused to be bullied and bribed into paying for a road they would never use! From: MARY DE HAAS Durban WITH regard to issues around traditional land occupancy raised by William Saunderson-Meyer (April 22), I should clarify that the rights of people living on land under traditional leadership are, in theory, protected by the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act. However, the existence of this legislation has not stopped the illegal removal of people from land, including for mining purposes.
People in Somkhele (Mtubatuba), from which some families were relocated a few years ago, are fighting to retain their land, and those in the Mkhwanazi area near Mtunzini are also resisting removal.
What is also of great concern is the threat to these rights posed by the Khoisan and Traditional Leadership Bill which gives too much power to chiefs and traditional councils – who often collude with mining companies – to take land-related decisions.
The government’s rhetoric about returning land to “the people” is a convenient smokescreen while it apparently turns a blind eye when the poor are disposed of their land, or colludes with those who are responsible for it.