For those who haven’t kept up with this saga, SANRAL is building the N2 Wild Coast Toll Highway in the Eastern Cape. The local community, through the Amadiba Crisis Committee, has been fighting to change the planned route, from the coast to the centre of Amadiba.
As part of the project, Sanral is building the highest bridge in Africa over the Mtentu River. The community of Khanyayo, on the other side, the south side of the river, has also been battling with SANRAL since 2018, when the highway started to be built. However, forced relocations and exhuming of graves did not affect everyone. And many who suffered the pain trusted it would be balanced by jobs for family members in the N2 project, and other promises made to the community by Sanral and its consultants. So the community was not united in its opposition.
Sanral is, however, notorious for not being able to keep its promises. They are typically supported—captured—by local traditional leaders and businesspeople with links to the ANC.
So, the Khanyayo community came together. In August 2025, following the example of their close neighbour Amadiba, residents of Khanyayo met and decided to form a Khanyayo Crisis Committee. The headman of Khanyayo, Chief Jama, has locked the community hall to stop the community from holding meetings and continuing to write petitions to Sanral. The meeting took place in a church.
Construction causing havoc
The building of the N2 through community land in Khanyayo is causing havoc.
Firstly, Sanral decided to use a lodge designed for some fifty tourists to accommodate hundreds of workers on the project. As a result, a conservation tank 20 meters away from the Khanyayo Clinic started to spill sewage into its yard.
The staff has been working in the stench for a year. The sewage is also suspected to contaminate the water in a nearby river used for drinking water. The whole area is a wetland, and dirt travels far.
Secondly, and even more serious because it risks of damage for the indefinite future in the community, the natural fresh water supply in Khanyayo has been strangled. Surplus stones and debris have been dumped in the wetlands beside the road built since construction began. As a result, the rivers and springs in Khanyayo are drying up. On top of that, they are covered with dust from the blasting.
Wetlands make decent life and subsistence agriculture possible in Pondoland. So Sanral’s inability or unwillingness to control its contractors, to intervene and stop what is going on, is therefore bad news in Amadiba. Whatever the final route of the N2, such violations and destructive behaviour by contractors who take shortcuts to increase profits cannot be accepted. In June, ACC opened a case with the Green Scorpions and the SA Human Rights Commission about this destructive behaviour. It was not only an act of solidarity, but also of self-defence. The slogan ‘An Injury to One is an Injury to All’ applies.
Release Andile Valela from prison in Flagstaff!
The Khanyayo community is right now also fighting the criminal justice system in Flagstaff.
On 14 April 2025, a community member, Andile Valela, was assaulted by police officers when he came early to a picket outside the gates of the offices of Sanral’s contractor, WBHO Construction. Two hours later, he went to the Mtontsasa SAPS to report them. There, he got handcuffed, arrested and assaulted again.
The trumped-up charges are “damaging a police car with a stone” and “insulting SAPS officers”. Bail has been denied twice, the main argument being that he did not give the name on his ID when he was arrested; he gave his cultural name, used by the whole community. The judge decided it made him a flight risk. He completely disregarded the fact that it was Andile who went to the police. Different cultural and ID names are common in the whole of the Eastern Cape. It is even a legacy of apartheid.
Comrade Andile Valela has been in prison for seven months. The trial is, of course, postponed again and again. In a petition delivered to the Flagstaff court in November 2025, the community slams the practice in the Eastern Cape of using refusal of bail as a punishment before any trial.
The denial of bail has been appealed at the Mthatha High Court.
The struggle continues!
Dick Forslund is an economist at AIDC and a son-in-law (umkhwenyana) of the Amadiba Crisis Committee.
*Andile Valela was granted bail by a judge at the Mthatha High Court on December 5, 2025, following an appeal.
