Dear Friends of SWC
The arguments
against the current proposed route of the N2 are many and varied. Those of you
who have been on the mailing list for some time may well have heard all these
arguments at some stage or another, but for newcomers, here they all are
together in one report. While compiling
this report it occurred to me that this scheme sounded like something that
could have been dreamed up by the Mad Hatter from
THE N2 TOLL EXTENSION – A MAD HATTERS SCHEME?
For those who visit Pondoland often, there are definite signs of economic growth and revival. Local towns have grown exponentially and are crushed with shoppers and traders, on and off the streets. Businesses are booming. Evenings, villages twinkle with electric lighting where before there was only darkness. Here is a new clinic and there a new school. Mud shacks are morphing into neat houses, some surrounded with tidy subsistence gardens and orchards. There is even the odd proud flower garden.
Still, despite indications that the area is slowly recovering from the poverty and economic deprivation of the apartheid homeland system, there is a definite need for improved infrastructure to the region, and for assisted poverty relief programmes and human resources development.
It is against this backdrop that the debate around a highly controversial scheme to build a Toll road rages, a debate that has spawned numerous letters of objection, newspaper and magazine articles, over 200 appeals to the EIA Record of Decision, and over 20 000 postcards of public protest and a large petition that is still ongoing, all of which appear to fall on deaf ears.
For much of its route the new N2 follows, more or less, the inland route of the old N2. No one has any objection to this. Neither is there any controversy over the need for a decent National road in the region.
The controversy is whether a toll road is the right solution to bring long term benefits to the region, and whether the routing of 80kms of the road through the ‘greenfields’ section, Pondoland’s centre of plant endemism, will not lead to the destruction of the area’s greatest potential economic asset, the pristine Wild Coast.
An unsolicited bid
A decent national road to link the Provinces of Kwazulu Natal and Eastern Cape had been under consideration for some time in government circles, but the prohibitive cost of such a project seemed to put it out of reach of National coffers until the consortium of Group 5, Grinaker –LTA, Intertoll, Hawkins, Hawkins and Osbourne, Stewart Scott, Kagiso Financial and Rand Merchant Bank put in an unsolicited bid to build an extension to the N2 that would effectively form a quicker link between Durban and East London. They would build and maintain the highway for 30 years. Costs would be recovered by the consortium by tolling.
There was one
proviso. The cost of two major suspension bridges across the Mtentu and
At first glance it seems a good plan - the country gets a new road at private business expense- and the South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) grabbed at the offer.
Is a Toll road the right economic solution?
SANRAL argues that the road will bring sorely needed economic upliftment to the area, create jobs, help alleviate poverty, and that businesses in Port St Johns’ and Umtata are very much in favour of the road. All very honourable at first glance, but closer inspection reveals huge cracks.
For a start say critics, including Bishop Geoffrey Davies of the Anglican Church (who for many years was Bishop of Umzimvubu under whose jurisdiction the area fell) how are local towns are going to benefit when the coastal section of the road between Port Edward and Msikaba Gorge avoids most of the local towns and villages (which are mostly situated inland) and travels through a relatively unpopulated, pristine area, with a very limited number of off-ramps for access to local towns?
The road would
cut the distance between
Engineers estimates an upgrade of the R61 would be in the region of R250 million. SANRAL maintain an additional cost of R350 million to compensate owners of houses and businesses that would have to be moved during the upgrade.
One has to ask if the developmental status of the country warrants such a huge input on a road that, on reflection, may do little to stimulate regional economies.
In Pondoland, the effect of Toll fees (quoted as R235 for the length of the road) on a poor population and on fledgling new businesses that rely wholly on road transport for the delivery of goods are likely to be detrimental and suppressive. In other area’s of South Africa where road-side towns have been by- passed by new toll- roads and highways, the effects on the towns have been devastating, with loss of business from through traffic leading to virtual ghost towns. Where, one must ask, is the wisdom in creating a new road away from existing nodes of development?
Along the already heavily tolled existing Kwazulu- Natal South Coast section of the N2, five new toll booths are to be built, and an increase in tolls is forecast in order to subsidize the new toll extension. Along this section the predominance of local traffic on the old, longer road and the avoidance by locals of the existing toll road would suggest toll fees are already deemed by locals to be excessive.
Residents, businesses and other interest groups of Durban and South Coast, including Sappi, Toyota, the Anti –Toll Road Alliance, the Taxi association, and sugar and banana growers, point out that new tolls in that area are going to increase substantially the cost of transport of goods to Durban, the major economic hub of the area, and question the morality of Kwazulu –Natal commuters having to foot the bill for a road built in Eastern Cape. SANRAL argues that without these tolls the road will not be economically feasible. Surely this points to the fact that the economic feasibility of the road has been questionable to start with?
Bishop Davies
maintains that if government are serious about poverty alleviation and about
stimulating the economies of local towns such as Bizana and Flagstaff, an
upgrading of local regional roads, many of which are in a hazardous condition,
would be far more beneficial to local villages and towns than an expensive toll
road which by its nature carries high speed, non-stopping traffic. Port
Of jobs, it is likely that most jobs created will be short term for the duration of the road construction, and that only a limited number of local unskilled labour are likely to benefit.
Far from being a vehicle of poverty alleviation, and a stimulus for local towns, it seems that the predominant beneficiaries of a toll road would be the consortium of road builders, engineers and toll companies that build it. Bishop Davies brought up these arguments in a meeting with Mr. Nazeer Alli of CEO of SANRAL in March. Mr. Alli responded that if the Toll went ahead as planned he, Mr Alli, would do his personal best to see to it that local roads were upgraded, but if the Toll was stopped nothing would be done about local roads.
An environmentally
destructive route.
Environmentalists as a whole are aghast at the route chosen for the road and question the need to take 80 kms of the road along the coastline right through the Pondoland Centre of Plant endemism. Furthermore, they argue that a National Toll highway along the jewel of the area, the coastline, is likely to be detrimental to any long term plans to develop community based eco- tourism in the area. They argue that the route should be an inland route, closer to already populated areas.
The Environmental Justice Networking Forum, an organisation that promotes sustainable land use amongst poor communities, had dubbed the route along the coastline an ‘act of enviro –vandalism’.
The
The Msikaba
Gorge, over which a suspension bridge is planned, is the site of the largest
breeding colony of Cape Grifffon Vultures outside of the old
The proposed suspension bridge over the Msikaba gorge will be built within a few kilometres of the colony. Vulture expert Prof. Steven Piper of the University of Kwazulu –Natal maintains there is no doubt that a road coming so close to the vulture colony will have an adverse affect on the birds, through human encroachment on habitat, through disturbance and by allowing easy access to the colony for harvesting. Vultures are used heavily in traditional medicines. As natures ‘corpse processors’ a demise of the vultures would lead to an increase in both human and animal disease. This in an area where medical treatment and health facilities, both human and animal, are scarce to non –existent, and where the subsistence way of life depends heavily on the well –being of domestic livestock
For fledgling
eco –tourist initiatives in the region, many of whom operate in conjunction and
co-operatively with local poor communities, the road could spell doom,
particularly as the current route severely cuts into and curtails the area
originally proposed for the planned
Figures released by the World Bank states that eco-tourism accounts for R415 million of the GGP of North Eastern Zululand, and supplies 7 000 jobs, suggesting that in an undeveloped, pristine area such as the wild coast, eco- tourism can be a major source of revenue.
The EIA –an ethical
controversy.
The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the road has also drawn controversy.
To begin with, EIA consultants were asked to look only at the environmental impacts of the road, and have not considered the social or economic consequences. Yet, one would have to argue whether these can be divorced from each other, especially as a recent international study has shown that environmental degradation has a direct correlation to social unrest, especially amongst subsistence communities where resources are scarce. A major road such as the toll is also likely to create social patterns that will negatively affect the environment, such as linear development and increased human encroachment. The EIA appears to have only looked at the direct environmental effects of the road, and has not taken into consideration secondary effects that may be caused by the road such as human encroachment and pollution.
Critics say the public scoping process was heavy handed and biased, and non –inclusive, with legitimate questions and concerns brushed over or ignored. Communities that will be directly affected by the road, including the traditional leaders of the region, the Pondo Royal House, maintain they have been sidelined; that ‘consultations’, if they took place at all, took the form of the road as a ‘faite accompli’ and that concerned parties were merely informed about it, and not given the opportunity to have their voices heard, and that attempts have been made to intimidate local opponents of the road. Proposed community meetings were cancelled at the last minute, no assistance with transport was offered in poor areas, and attempts were made to exclude media representatives from public meetings.
Meanwhile, rumours continue to circulate about service contracts already awarded, about vested interests pushing the road, and that the road is a ‘done deal’.
The ‘right’ road is needed.
With so much controversy surrounding the road, one begs to ask why SANRAL are so doggedly pursuing a route for a road where no-one seems to want it; to the extent of placing large double page adverts in many of the national newspapers and holding media tours to ‘sell’ the road? (The adverts themselves came under controversy when the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint that they were misleading and that SANRAL could not give independent verification for many of the claims in the adverts.)
Surely the right course of action, if a national road is to be built, is to build one where it will be in the best regional and National interest; not to build blindly for the sake of getting a road or out of motives of making money from tolling?
One has to
question the purpose of the road. If it is merely to provide a fast link
between
If the intention is to stimulate local economies, then is it a toll road that is needed?
SANRAL say they have explored other options. Critics argue that SANRAL have not looked at options other than at various routes within a narrow reach of the coast, and only looked at routes for a Toll.
Which makes one
ponder if SANRAL’s insistence on taking this particular route could mean that
there are other vested interests in seeing the road there? Is it pure co-
incidence, as SANRAL claim, that the road turns coastward and follows a
parallel route alongside areas that have been marked by an Australian mining
company for open cast mining of minerals? Is it pure co –incidence that a
report by Richards Bay Minerals (who looked into the possibility of mining
there in the 80’s but decided against it on grounds that the unique nature of
the area made it un-rehabilitable) concluded that mining along the
Could it be that a private consortium of companies with their own interests at heart are dictating to a government agency where National roads will be built? Have a private consortium come to the drawing table with the proposal to build a road where they will have it?. Does ‘economically viable’ in this instance mean ‘most profitable’ for a private consortium, whose main objective obviously is to make money, not to serve the public interest? Does this mean the interests of the nation as a whole are being hijacked by large corporations with their own vested interests at heart? If this is the case, surely large corporate interests should not be allowed to bulldoze themselves into decisions of National concern?
A Wild Coast
Conservation and Sustainable Development Project is
being funded by the Eastern Cape Department of Economic Affairs, Environment
and Tourism, the Development Bank of
Surely the sensible and responsible action would be delay the decision of such a major project as the Toll road until the outcome of the WCCSDP is announced. This would ensure that any roads built will serve the best possible interests of the region as a whole, and of the people who live there, and that a wilderness area most unique in the world, that could be a gem for South Africa, will not be needlessly destroyed forever.
If any part of this communication is used by media etc
please acknowledge compiled by:-
Save the
SWC is a loose
coalition of over 300 organisations and individuals who are opposed to the
routing of the N2 through the ‘greenfields’ section of the Wild coast and
proposed open cast mining in the area.
Val Payn
Communications –coordinator
Cathy Kay
skids@telkomsa.net
tel – 082-459 6454
Bishop Geoff Davies
telefax – 27 21 788 6591
Prof. S.E Piper
Tel - O33 – 260 -5112