Early-morning commuters to and from Paarl and Simondium as well as nearby luxury estates such as Val de Vie were severely disrupted on Tuesday morning when residents of the Brickfields informal settlement rioted at the entrance to Paarl.
It started around 05:00 when a group of residents of Brickfields obstructed this very busy crucial entrance to Paarl by burning tyres and other debris on the R101 and R45. Stones were hurled at cars as well as unconfirmed incidents of petrol bombs.
Police were quick on the scene and traffic was diverted to other routes leading in and out of the area.
What for some would have been a commute of just 10 minutes ended up in a journey of more than an hour.
Paarl police spokesperson Captain Louise du Plessis said local police members and Public Order Policing were called out to quell this illegal protest action on the R101 Simondium road, where a group of more than 80 people from a nearby informal settlement blockaded the road with tyres and stones.
The group was demanding that an electrical connection in the informal settlement be repaired by the Drakenstein Municipality.
It failed to reconnect the electricity since December, when a fire destroyed the electrical unit.
After negotiations with the police, during which the group was informed they were engaged in an illegal protest, they dispersed.
Du Plessis said no-one had been injured in the altercation nor was property damaged, and no arrests were made.
She said the area was monitored for possible flare-ups during the rest of the day.
In 2018, Drakenstein Municipality spent more than R20 million in electrifying the Brickfield informal settlement.
A municipal spokesperson said in December 2021 a fire broke out at the settlement, which caused a large part of the electrical infrastructure that supplies power there to be damaged.
Repair to this amounts to approximately R1 500 000.
The municipality says in terms of the national government’s policy for the allocation of funding for the electrification of informal areas, those that have already benefited from them may not receive funding again, but rather those areas that have not yet benefited from these services.
The municipality has therefore also decided not to use its annual electrification budget for repairs where electrification has already taken place, but to continue with new electrification projects as previously planned and communicated.
The municipality’s current operating budget also does not provide for this type of repair work. Therefore it can only be handled with an allocated capital budget, specifically for the repair of infrastructure destroyed by fire damage. The municipality then also communicated this information several times to the relevant leaders and the community of Brickfields.
