Municipal councillor summonsed to appear in court for repainting faded road markings in Karoo town

Aberdeen resident and DA councillor Eldridge Ruiters had to appear in the town’s magistrates’ court on Tuesday, 5 November 2024, after he received a notice that he was painting lines on the town’s roads “without permission”.

Ruiters has admitted that he was repainting the lines in the town as the faded road lines and parking spot indicators have not been painted in many years, and are faded and barely visible.

While several other municipalities in the country have bylaws that prohibit the painting of road markings without the municipality’s permission, it is not evident that the Dr Beyers Naudé Local Municipality has such a bylaw. The municipality did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more: Here be dragons … but that’s just one of the surprising things in Aberdeen, a remarkable Karoo town

Eastern Cape spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority Luxolo Tyali said it wasn’t a trivial matter.

“That is a very serious offence. If people change road markings, others might follow those and get into serious accidents. Road signs and markings have to comply with the law. Making your own markings or changing markings is changing legal directives to suit you,” said Tyali.

“If we leave him, others may follow suit, and that may lead to anarchy,” he said.

Ruiters, however, was adamant that he was not doing anything wrong. “I measure and do it strictly according to the bylaws,” he said.

“I won’t lie, we want the votes, that is why we have started this campaign. The DA bought the paint,” he said.

“But I am not doing anything wrong. Where the lines are faded, I paint exactly over the same lines and, where you can’t see the lines, I look up what the measurements must be, and we measure and paint exactly according to these.”

Ruiters is a PR councillor in the municipality’s council. The two ward councillors in Aberdeen, however, are from the ANC.

To his surprise, Ruiters was first tipped off by a resident while he was on his way to Graaff-Reinet that trouble was coming. The next thing he knew, at 9am on Friday he received a notice to either pay a R350 fine or appear in court. 

He chose court. 

“I was preparing for court the whole weekend. I was looking for that bylaw, but I couldn’t find it. Also, they gave me a traffic notice. He said the ‘onder-magistraat’ [the colloquial word for the prosecutor] told him she could also not find the bylaw and even phoned the municipality for clarity but could not find anything. So, she refused to put the case on the court roll.

“I must go to court tomorrow to go fetch my proof that the case was removed,” he said. 

He said there were a lot of private initiatives to clean up and restore Aberdeen. 

“I really feel like this was a malicious prosecution,” he said. “What a chance to take with me … they don’t even have a bylaw like that.” DM