Broken promises and the lack of basic service delivery will drive industries away and sink us further into poverty and unemployment.
That is not a threat. It is what is already happening in KwaNobuhle.
Over the last few days I’ve watched a worrying pattern play out again in the Gunguluza area, Area 10/11.
Tyres are being burnt and roads are being closed.
I understand the anger.
Our community is still grieving the departure of Goodyear and the closures and retrenchments that followed in the small component supply businesses around it.
Housing and electricity matter.
No one is denying that.
But what many don’t seem to grasp is the cost of shutting down the very channels that keep the few businesses we have left alive.
Companies like Sovereign Foods rely on these roads to move products to the rest of the country and the world.
When we block those routes, we don’t just hurt “big business”.
We hand their customers to competitors, damage their reputation, and put their workers on the chopping block.
On Friday May 15, a truck delivering mealies to nearby businesses was burnt.
That’s one more supply line gone.
More business lost.
More jobs gone in a place where jobs are already scarce.
Let me be clear: this is not an attempt to dismiss the issues people are raising.
The frustration with lying politicians and officials is real.
I hear it every day.
But in my more than 40 years, I have never seen burning infrastructure bring answers.
What I have seen is dialogue ending wars.
We need to ask ourselves a hard question: what good is access to electricity if you have no income to pay for it?
If we think the closure of Goodyear was a disaster, wait until VWSA starts thinking about leaving.
Industry runs on time.
If parts don’t arrive on schedule, production stops, deliveries fail, trust collapses, and closure becomes inevitable.
People must not be lied to.
And we must not lie to ourselves.
If we are unhappy with the present, we still have to think about the future.
Let us all act now.
Resolve the situation in Area 10/11.
Protect the few jobs we have left in our city before there’s nothing left to save.
• Sdeba Lindithemba writes from a neglected pothole called KwaNobuhle
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