The N2 in Cape Town (Photo: Shutterstock)
Cape Town’s plans to build a wall to prevent attacks on the Airport Expressway (N2) have divided South Africa’s tourism city, with critics describing it as an apartheid throwback that tries to hide poverty.
The almost nine kilometer long wall will separate part of the road leading from the Cape Town International Airport to the city from the densely populated, poor settlements that lie along the route.
Attacks, some fatal, have been reported on the busy route for years, including hijackings and grab attacks.
“They come with a stone and break the windshield,” said Mustafa Hashim, an e-taxi driver, as he recounted stories of attacks on the route known as the “N2 hell ride”.
“If you want to keep your life, then you just let them take what they want,” he told AFP.
The city announced the security project, known as the N2 Edge project, worth R114 million in December, shortly after a woman died at a traffic light near the highway when she was attacked with a sharp object after leaving the airport.
The core of the project is a three meter high “safety barrier” which will strengthen a damaged concrete palisade and should keep the road free from criminals, as well as pedestrians and animals.
“Literally hundreds of thousands of people use that road every day, and many of them feel unsafe,” said Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, emphasizing that most of these users are local commuters.
The Mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis. (Photo: Clifford Roberts)
‘Walls don’t stop crime’
Residents of the Nyanga informal settlement, which will fall behind the highway wall, say they are victims of the same crime reported on the road, but that the new barrier will mean nothing to them.
According to Linda Monakali (43), attackers simply disappear in the maze of corrugated iron houses.
“This wall will help motorists, but for us the perpetrators will still be here,” she told AFP.
According to police data, Nyanga Police Station reported the highest number of aggravated robberies in the country between October and December last year.
The police station also recorded the second highest number of murders, with an increase of 29% compared to the previous quarter.
Cape Town’s high crime and murder rate is largely concentrated in poorer areas – a world away from the affluent neighbourhoods, beaches and mountains that attract millions of tourists.
Pres. Cyril Ramaphosa has meanwhile announced that the army will soon be deployed in parts of the city plagued by bloody gang wars.
City authorities should rather look at “how we can improve our living environment than thinking about a security wall on the N2,” said Dumisani Qwebe, chairman of the Nyanga Community Policing Forum.
“Walls may stop bullets, but they don’t stop crime,” said Jonathan Cupido, city council member of the GOOD party.