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Touws River, gateway to the Karoo — an old railway town beset by unstable politics

Touws River, gateway to the Karoo — an old railway town beset by unstable politics
Daily Maverick’s Election 2024 coverage is supported, in part, with funding from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and vehicles supplied by Ford.
Tamsin Metelerkamp
By Tamsin Metelerkamp
1 May 2024
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Touws River in the Western Cape, also known as the ‘gateway to the Karoo’, has had little consistency in its voting patterns down the years. As the general election looms, some in the community are trying to change this.

Touws River is a town looking to reinvent itself – specifically, its place in the local economy. It suffered a major blow with the closure of the railway line that runs through it in the 1990s, from which it has never quite recovered. In recent years, the declining South African economy and the unexpected crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic have taken their toll on the area.

For some locals, the ability to vote in the upcoming general election is firmly tied up with their economic goals. This is the case for Franswa Jerome Pietersen, a local businessman, who advocates for a change in the way residents use their voting power.

Touws River Franswa Jerome Pietersen sits in him home in Touws River, Western Cape. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



Pietersen told Daily Maverick: “The railway stopped in 1996... What happened then was that there were a lot of negative news reports published about Touwsrivier. ‘Ghost town’; ‘it’s a town where everybody is going to die’; ‘it’s like a graveyard’... And what keeps us going on with what we are doing is those who stayed behind, because a lot of the people left the town and bought places somewhere else.

“There’s good people in the community… There’s also a lot of challenges in our community... We are in a climate where we are now facing elections and… I’m trying to raise awareness in the sense of telling people to try and use their votes as a business thing, for business powers. But we need to stand as a collective. Once we can stand as a collective in our community, there will be more respect from outside towards us.”

Touws River The Touws River recycling centre. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)


‘Unstable’ politics


Touws River is in the Western Cape, lying adjacent to the N1 about 160km northeast of Cape Town. It is located on a river of the same name and falls in Ward 1 of the Breede Valley Local Municipality, which is part of the Cape Winelands District Municipality. Lying on the border between the Karoo and the Boland, it has been described as a “gateway” to both.

Unemployment has long been a challenge in the area. During the Covid-19 pandemic, unemployment was reported to have reached 93% due to the closure of local businesses such as Commuter Transport Engineering (CTE), a train refurbishment company, and the nearby Aquila Game Reserve, one of the area’s biggest employers. The situation has since improved, with CTE and Aquila reopening and new investors from the renewable energy industry entering the region. However, job opportunities remain limited.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Covid-19: Unemployment destroying hinges on the ‘Doorway to the Karoo’

Touws River Children queue for food at Compassionate Hearts soup kitchen in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



“The reason investors don’t want to invest in Touwsrivier is very simple. The politics of our town is unstable and investors do not come to places like this, where things are unstable, because it’s a waste of money,” Pietersen said. He further claimed that certain local leaders had been known to “gatekeep” incoming opportunities.

The description of local politics as “unstable” was backed up by the outcomes of the past two local government elections for Ward 1 of the Breede Valley Municipality. In 2016, the DA received 44% of the vote, followed by the ANC with 22% and Breedevallei Onafhanklik (a local party) with 12%. By 2021, the distribution of votes had changed drastically, with the ANC receiving the majority at 39%, followed by the Patriotic Alliance with 25.5% and the Economic Liberation Congress with 13%. The DA received only 12.6%.

Pietersen advocates for residents to bargain with political parties by trading their united voting power in the general election, and the 2026 local government election, for tangible development and service delivery opportunities. He wants to see local workers – particularly young people – transformed from labourers into skilled workers. 

The Census 2022 results showed that only 10.7% of people (20 years and older) in the Breede Valley Municipality were receiving higher education.

Touws River Inside the Touws River recycling centre. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



A vacant school in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



Touws River A classroom in a vacant school in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



Daily Maverick was shown two sites in Touws River where residents believe the government can support development in order to provide opportunities for locals. One was the local waste transfer station, which was set up to include a recycling centre where residents could recover materials of value. However, the centre does not function.

Another was a vacant and dilapidated school building on Jane Street, the main road running into town, which reportedly closed more than 20 years ago but had yet to be demolished or repurposed. The building currently falls under the ownership of the Department of Transport and Public Works. Residents said they would like to see it transformed into something that benefits the community.

“The school is a very ugly face of the town… This place was a beautiful place… and it could serve the community so well. I mean, we can develop it into a skills development place for adult training. There can be medical wards… There’s so many possibilities and opportunities,” said Pastor Deon de Koker of the local Apostolic Faith Mission Church.

Pastor Deon de Koker of the Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)


The struggle for NGOs


Non-governmental organisations play an important role in Touws River, supporting services such as soup kitchens and the local old age home. However, in the worsening economic climate, many have seen a decline in funding, placing the community services they run at risk. 

The AGS Home for the Aged in Touws River, supported by the Apostolic Faith Mission Church, is on the verge of closing for good. The facility supports about 50 residents – including a 117-year-old woman, Margaret Maritz, who is believed to be the oldest living resident of the Western Cape – and 26 staff members.

Touws River home for the aged The AGS Home for the Aged in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



Margaret Maritz (117), a resident of the AGS Home for the Aged in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



AGS Home Margaret Maritz (117) is believed to be the oldest living resident of the Western Cape. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



De Koker explained: “The Apostolic Faith Mission Church has a lot of other projects – children homes, houses for abused women and other old age homes – in different towns… This one and all the other projects and institutions, the church’s welfare arm established in a time when the economy was very good. We are now about 20 years, 30 years later, and as we all know, the economy has gone bad. 

“The church usually keeps the homes running with the help of [the Department of Social Development]... and also from the old age grants of the residents… Nevertheless, the church is struggling heavily to maintain the old age home, even with a subsidy of the DSD.”
In 30 years the ANC haven’t come up with a sustainable solution for any of our problems in this country.

While De Koker does plan to vote, he said he was “very cautious” of politicians because of their tendency to use electioneering tactics in the lead-up to elections. However, “if any political party came to me now and said, ‘We are willing to give the old age home some money’, by all means, I will accept it. It doesn’t matter who you are, I will take it.”

Touws River People queue for food at the Compassionate Hearts soup kitchen in Touws River. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



De Koker is also responsible for one of three church-run soup kitchens in the town, with the other two run by the Full Gospel and African Methodist Episcopal churches. Between the three churches, they provide meals for about 1,200 people in the community. They often see a rise in food insecurity when seasonal work on the local vineyards dries up.

In recent years, the Department of Social Development has cut its funding for the provision of food to the Apostolic Faith Mission Church’s soup kitchen.

“When I receive the food, I distribute the food equally between us and the other two kitchens,” said De Koker. “I am looking for an alternative [funder] but I haven’t found one yet. If the kitchen staff inform me the gas is out then I must pay that from my own pocket.”

Touws River Rashad Baker, co-founder of Compassionate Hearts soup kitchen. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



Dalene van der Merwe (right), co-founder of Compassionate Hearts soup kitchen in Touws River, with beneficiaries. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)



Daily Maverick visited another soup kitchen in Touws River, the Compassionate Hearts NPO run by co-founders Rashaad Baker and Dalene van der Merwe. Gift of the Givers was in the process of delivering supplies to the nonprofit, while queues of people waited across the street for a meal.

“Frankly, I’m not interested in the current political situation in this country because I do not foresee any real changes after these elections,” Baker said. “The fact that the government cut budgets prior to the elections – and I’m talking about social development, I’m talking about all departments – means it negatively affects everybody in the country. The people who are being worst affected are those of us that are working in the NPO sector because we have no guarantee that we will get any assistance from government’s side this year.
You must be aligned to the national government to ensure that you get national support because local government can’t do things on their own.

“In the 30 years that the ANC has been in power, they haven’t come up with a sustainable solution for any of our problems that we’re experiencing in this country, whether it’s load shedding, youth development [or] poverty alleviation.”

Read more in Daily Maverick: Western Cape NPOs sound alarm on impacts of social development budget cuts on the vulnerable

However, Baker expressed the concern that if a coalition government emerged from the elections, it would only create more problems. “Everything they’re going to do is going to be a compromise but a compromise to whose benefit? To their benefit or to the actual people who are waiting for them? And most of the time, it’s to their benefit and not to the people.”

Russell Johnson, the ANC councillor for Ward 1 of the Breede Valley Local Municipality, under which Touws River falls. (Photo: Joyrene Kramer)


Politics at play


Russell Johnson, a Touws River local, became the ANC councillor overseeing Ward 1 of the Breede Valley Municipality in 2021. He described the town as having a “historical problem” of underdevelopment, as infrastructure such as the sewerage system had not grown alongside the population.

“After I was elected, on 6 December 2021, I received a letter from the National Department of Water and Sanitation [saying] that they’re going to give Touws River the Municipal Infrastructure Grant to expand their sewerage. Then I realised that since the people had voted ANC, the national government immediately released the funds to that ward. And that’s how politics is,” he said, adding that he thought it would have been more difficult to access national resources as a DA-led ward.

He continued: “You must be aligned to the national government to ensure that you get national support because local government can’t do things on their own. That’s the reality.”

Read more in Daily Maverick: 2024 elections

Daily Maverick asked National Treasury about the idea that the national government was inclined to favour ANC-led regions when it came to financial support. It responded that there was “no justification” for the statement as the government had a “fair and transparent” process to determine allocations to individual municipalities from the national fiscus.

“All proposals for allocations and the reasons thereof are tabled in Parliament and discussed in public hearings, which are attended by the various political parties. To our knowledge, notwithstanding disagreements that may arise on different aspects of the budget, no political party has formally complained or presented evidence to the effect that allocations that are proposed by national government are being made on the basis of political affiliation,” Treasury said.

According to Johnson, several new opportunities have been brought into the community during his tenure as councillor, including:

  • R36-million has been approved for the upgrade of Touws River’s large gravel roads from the Municipal Infrastructure Grant;

  • Construction jobs for local residents in nearby roadworks projects; and

  • Job opportunities in private renewable energy projects.


Asked about the claims by some residents that local leaders had tried to control who benefited from opportunities coming into the community, Johnson said he believed that was a problem of the past.

“[Touws River] has had 15 years of degraded [infrastructure] and negligence and nepotism… and when someone like me comes in and wants to do the right thing… it’s difficult for people to adapt to the new system because they are being brainwashed in the sense that they still believe in what the previous councillors have done,” he said.

Johnson mentioned the lack of consistency in voting patterns in Touws River and said it was this tendency to “change from party to party” that had hindered development in the community. 

“You can’t just go and give your vote to anyone. In Touws River, we’ve learned that the hard way,” he said. DM

(Graphic: Rudi Louw)



Daily Maverick’s Election 2024 coverage is supported, in part, with funding from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and vehicles supplied by Ford.

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