Protesters block N2 for hours at Grabouw
They demanded sanitation and water
Hundreds of people are living on state land in Knoflokskraal with limited water supply and no electricity or sanitation facilities. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks.
Residents of Khoisan settlement Knoflokskraal blocked the N2 in Grabouw with burning rubble in the early hours of Wednesday. About 80 people joined the protest at the High Rising road turnoff, according to Western Cape police spokesperson Captain FC van Wyk.
Traffic was delayed for several hours.
Van Wyk said Grabouw SAPS, Public Order Police Services, and other law enforcement agencies responded. By 9:30am the group had “dispersed peacefully” and the N2 was reopened. No arrests were made.
Dawid De Wee, president of the Khoi Aboriginal Party, said residents had reached a “breaking point” due to a lack of water.
People first occupied the Knoflokskraal land in 2020 with the intention of establishing a Khoisan community. The settlement has grown substantially since then, with hundreds, possibly thousands, of people occupying about 1,800 hectares, and living without access to electricity and sanitation facilities.
The land is owned by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure.
De Wee said the water pump had stopped working because there was no electricity supply. GroundUp could not establish why there is no power.
The Theewaterskloof Municipality trucked in water, but it is “way too little”, said De Wee.
“Our demands are plain and simple: we want our basic human rights,” said De Wee.
He said some Knoflokskraal residents had put in their own septic tanks, but these are not being emptied by the municipality.
GroundUp previously reported how Knoflokskraal residents protested next to the N2 over water and sanitation in 2023.
The Theewaterskloof Municipality said in a media release that a municipal delegation met with the protestors, who “were demanding that electricity to the area be restored to enable access to water”.
The municipality said a meeting has been scheduled later this week to bring together the protestors and “stakeholders” to find amicable solutions.
The municipality said that while “service delivery responsibilities lie with the Department of Public Works”, the municipality is “committed to being an active participant in facilitating solutions”.
Next: Secretary says judge asked her for a “BJ”
Previous: Children miss school as uniforms destroyed in Philippi fire
Letters
Dear Editor
So because of human rights, anyone can now abandon common sense completely, and go and plak anywhere on a godforsaken piece of dirt somewhere, and expect running water and electricity to be supplied. When that's not happening, make life hell for people who have absolutely nothing to do with your stupidity. The entitlement and stupidity is mind-blowing. These two factors are South Africa's biggest problem by far, not racism or corrupt politicians.
Dear Editor
It is my humble view that the occupants of the state forestry land in Grabouw brought their troubles unto themselves by illegally occupying land not suitable for residential purposes but for forestry purposes. Through their unlawful actions they are blocking the forestry recommissioning project on the land thereby preventing economic development in the region that can create jobs for the poorest of the poor. In fact an in depth investigation into the situation may even reveal that the Khoisan dream has been hijacked by criminals from Cape Town and surrounds.
Dear Editor
Once again, law-abiding citizens are put at risk and having their lives disrupted by a small mob. It was not peaceful as rocks were being thrown at drivers, endangering their lives and causing people to miss flights, etc.
Lighting of fires is arson – pure and simple – yet no one is arrested or held accountable.
It's a two tier system of policing and we are surprised it keeps happening... Really.
© 2025 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.