Months later, R1 billion project to fix N1 north yet to kick off

Date: 20 April 2023 By: Andries van Zyl

The more observant of our local motorists have noticed by now that nothing has come of the announcement by the South-African National Road Agency (SANRAL) last year that it would be “fixing” the N1 north between Louis Trichardt and Musina at an estimated cost of just over R1 billion. SANRAL’s announcement came in response to a public outcry about the deplorable state of this section of the national highway at that time, especially regarding potholes.

In our 28 October 2022 edition, the newspaper wrote about one of these complainants, Mr Jaco Lyon of Mopane. He actually went out and counted the number of potholes on a 13-kilometre stretch of the N1 between Bokmakierie and the Riverside Nursery. In total, Lyon counted 583 potholes in this section of the road. The newspaper’s interest in the story was triggered by a number of environmental-impact-assessment (EIA) notices on fences and farm gates along this section of road. The notice was for the proposed upgrading of the “SANRAL SOC LTD National Road 1 (N1) Section 29, from Masekwaspoort (Km 27.80) to Musina (Km 70), Limpopo Province”. According to the notices, the project will entail the general upgrading of the 42.2 km-long road section, including six major intersections, a number of farm accesses, three road bridges and seven major culverts located along the route. The object of the notice was to invite the public to register as interested or affected parties as the project will include upgrades and associated mining activities, seeing that the material for the project will be sourced from seven borrow pits, encompassing an area of up to 125ha located along the road.

Asked when the project was scheduled to commence, Mr Madoda Mthembu (SANRAL Northern Region’s operations and maintenance manager) stated at the time that the tender advert for the construction project would go out in November last year.

Almost six months later, the newspaper again approached SANRAL to find out what had happened to the project.

In response, Mr Mthembu stated on Tuesday that the project was still on track, although delayed. “The tender advert has not been published yet, due to delays in finalising the environmental processes and approvals,” said Mthembu, adding that the tender document was almost ready. “SANRAL will communicate when the tender advert will be published,” said Mthembu.

As for the current state of the N1, SANRAL was also asked if they were experiencing a backlog in maintenance. “The daily Routine Road Maintenance (RRM) will continue to keep the road safe up until the rehabilitation contractor is appointed,” said Mthembu.

In the meantime, many hope that the appointment of the contractor will happen sooner rather than later as this section of the N1, which is not a dual carriageway like the N1 south of Polokwane, is taking a daily pounding from heavy national and international traffic. According to SANRAL’s own statistics,  approximately 3 480 vehicles travel on this section of the N1 between Louis Trichardt and Musina daily, of which heavy vehicles constitute 35%.

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Andries van Zyl

Andries joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in April 1993 as a darkroom assistant. Within a couple of months he moved over to the production side of the newspaper and eventually doubled as a reporter. In 1995 he left the newspaper group and travelled overseas for a couple of months. In 1996, Andries rejoined the Zoutpansberger as a reporter. In August 2002, he was appointed as News Editor of the Zoutpansberger, a position he holds until today.

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