Gabazi villagers repair death road themselves

Residents of Gabazi village in Qumbu have rolled up their sleeves to fix their “deadly” road themselves.

They spent hours on Tuesday and Wednesday fetching crushed stones to repair the damage on the gravel road that connects them to town and hospitals.

The Dispatch reported in March that scores of high school pupils miss out on school whenever it rains as scholar transport can’t pick them up because the road becomes too slippery.

The village has no high school and pupils are ferried by bus to schools in town. The villagers claim seven people have died on the road in the past 15 years.

About 35 men, young and old, took up shovels and picks after years of their pleas to Mhlontlo municipality for the road to be resurfaced apparently falling on deaf ears.

Khaya Noraga, who provided his bakkie to load the crushed stone, said he nearly crashed his car on the road a week ago.

“This road affects us all in this village.

“I have to visit my elderly parents every day to bring them food and things they need.

“It is impossible to drive there when it rains.

“Even if it rains while someone is in town, they cannot go back home because of the road,” he said.

“When a car is damaged, the

I have to visit my elderly parents every day to bring them food and things they need

government does not pay for it. We did this to make it safer for our cars.

“Our municipality tells us that it’s a long process for a road construction to be done, but there have been two elections since they told us that.”

He said it would help if the municipality could at least provide slab foundations on those parts of the road that were on an incline.

Zethu Mzambo, a Grade 11 pupil, decided to join the road repair team because he’d had to miss out on school sometimes because of the rain.

“We fear for our safety when we see signs of rain. It means we miss out on a lot of school work as we wait for the road to dry. That is painful because we don’t want to miss school,” he said.

“With what we have done, we hope that things will be better.”

Mhlontlo mayor Nompumelelo Dywili’s phone went to voicemail and she had not responded to queries at the time of writing.