Residents of Thohoyandou Block P have made it clear that they will not accept any development to take place in their area without the municipality first consulting them .

This transpired during a march organized by the local civic to highlight their plight to the municipality.

Traffic in Thohoyandou came to a complete halt and services were running slow at Thulamela municipality´s head office at Thohoyandou last week. The march started at a sports ground next to the Vhembe SASSA offices, coincidentally the ground that the municipality wants to turn into a temporary bus rank. The community says, however, this will only occur over their dead bodies and chanting marchers waving placards denouncing the municipality took the direction of the stadium and went via JJ Motors and Khoroni Hotel to the municipal offices.

After reading out the memorandum, the leadership of the residents handed it over to the municipality’s chief whip, Mr Mammba, who signed it and promised to respond within seven days.

The chairperson of the local civic, Mr Booi Ramukhuba, said they had had enough of the municipality´s undermining them. “These people do not know us. They do not care for us and we feature nowhere in their plans. This is the reason why they do things without consulting us. They had a meeting at the town hall and they were not even shy to tell the whole world that they had consulted us, when the reality was that we were not part of the meeting. They rented the people of Maniini to be part of their so-called consultative meeting, but today we have the real people of Block P,” said Ramukhuba.

Amongst their demands were that the municipality should stop dividing the people of Block P by imposing two councilors on the area, that the two areas P-East and P-West remain united like before and that the playground where they plan to have a temporary bus rank belongs to the community, and that there should be no development if it is not for upgrading the grounds to acceptable standards.

“We do not want a temporary bus rank here. How are we going to be sure that they will improve our grounds when they are failing to upgrade the only stadium here at Thohoyandou, which is today being used for cricket? They should use the parking lot at the stadium as a temporary rank,” said Ramukhuba.

They also demand that the municipality should repair the road behind Cash Build, which has been damaged by trucks, within 30 days and that the municipality should stop trucks from using the street as an offloading bay, as they are disturbing residents and blocking entrances to houses.