Communities threaten to close R75 as lack of traffic lights claims three lives

Daily Maverick

3 days ago

Angry people living next to the R75 between Gqeberha and Kariega are threatening action to close the vital road after a further four accidents over the past weekend.
Communities living along the R75 have threatened to close the vital route between Kariega and Gqeberha after four accidents, three of them fatal, happened over the weekend at crossings where the robots have not been working for years.
'It has been a terrible two days. Terrible,' Zukile Madikane said. 'Not even an hour ago, there was another accident.' He recounted how one of the political leaders phoned him early on Sunday morning.
'We know they are frustrated too,' he said. 'But can't we just fix the robots? That robot at Perseverance is a solar robot, people don't steal solar,' he said. 'I genuinely want to know if the municipality thinks they can do nothing because those who are dying are black,' he said.
The Perseverance robot was put up by the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber's Perseverance Cluster after years of accidents at that crossing.
Madikane said that while there were meetings with stakeholders and the community, it was mostly about road safety awareness and their plans to roll out a big campaign in October. He is the founder of Ikhakha le Afrika, an NGO that actively promotes road safety and also conducts daily patrols on the road to help children and the elderly cross safely.
'But nothing is being said about the robots. 'We haven't received any feedback,' he said.
'In the last meeting we had four councillors,' he said. 'But now people want to close the road. I am trying to stop them, but I think one morning we are going to wake up and the road will be closed. The tires will burn,' he said.
'The R75 is a major supply road, we know that, but there is going to come a day when we won't have control any more and the road will burn,' he said.
Madikane said one of the fatalities over the past weekend was a well-known shop steward at Volkswagen. 'The people who die in these accidents are people from the community,' he said.
Grim statistics
In May, the metro released statistics showing that 1,411 people were injured and 35 were killed in accidents on the R75 between Gqeberha and Kariega in 12 months.
Apart from the robots at several busy crossings not working, there are also no street lights and no real road safety measures.
In September last year, Sanral called for 'greater collaboration from the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and other stakeholders to restore the R75 road to acceptable safety standards'.
In April, when Minister of Transport Barbara Creecy visited Nelson Mandela Bay, Sanral officials said that an intelligent transport system being piloted on the R75 would also assist in monitoring vandalism on the R75 and the N2 national road in Gqeberha, as well as respond to safety-related issues. This will, however, be operational only by March 2026.
However, Sanral has frequently made it clear that keeping the robots working is not its job.
In a previous response, the organisation said: 'The operation and maintenance of traffic signals and streetlighting rests with the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality. Admittedly, the ongoing occurrences of theft and vandalism of electrical infrastructure along the road networks is a massive challenge across the entire Nelson Mandela Bay.
The Democratic Alliance's Gustav Rautenbach said he filed a motion before the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro safety and security committee to ask that urgent attention be given to the R75, but even though he filed it in May, the committee has not since sat, so it hasn't been heard.
'It was postponed on 13 June and again on 24 July. We don't have a new date yet,' he said. 'They are playing with people's lives. I am really bedonnerd [angry] and disappointed about this,' Rautenbach said.
His motion states, 'It is noted with great concern that no traffic lights, pedestrian crossing lights or streetlights are working on the R75 between Gqeberha and Kariega.
'Most, if not all of these, are lying broken on the ground for years now,' the motion said.
Rautenbach asked the committee to order that the executive director of safety and security in the metro engage with Sanral to find a workable solution to the problem and that all possible steps be taken to get traffic lights working again along this stretch of road.
He also called for cooperation between the metro's safety and security and electricity and engineering departments to find a solution to vandalism and the rampant theft of copper cables in the area, including the installation of anti-vandalism boxes for traffic lights and steps taken to fix streetlights.