"'Apartheid thinking': The R115m wall to stop bricks hitting drivers on Cape Town's N2"

Cape Town plans a 3 metre high, 9 kilometre wall beside the N2 near the airport, and one post online on 19 October called it "a masterclass of apartheid-era thinking disguised as a safety solution". It was seen about 59,000 times.

People who drive that road every day have a short answer. It is not about apartheid. It is about the brick that comes through the windscreen.

What exactly is being built beside the N2?

The City of Cape Town is building it, under what it calls the N2 Edge project. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announced the plan in December 2025 and first put the cost at about R180 million.

On 29 January 2026 the city council passed an adjustment budget with R115 million for the N2 safety project. Of that, R7 million is for design and R108 million is for most of the building in the 2027 financial year.

How bad the road really is, stretch by stretch, is in our guide to driving the N2 safely.

The wall is not alone. The plan also covers lighting, pedestrian crossings, cameras and control of who can walk onto the highway. Al Jazeera, which reported the 3 metre and 9 kilometre figures, says no contractor has been named.

The mayor says there is already a barrier there. He calls it "just completely dilapidated" and says it was built about 20 years ago, when the ANC ran the city.

How dangerous is the road drivers call the Hell Run?

The stretch between Somerset West, the airport and the city centre passes Nyanga, Philippi, Borcherds Quarry and Mew Way. Police say attackers often put rocks on the road to burst tyres. Then they rob the driver who stops.

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The roads agency SANRAL logged 564 crime-related events on the N2 and the R300 in 2024, according to figures quoted by Al Jazeera. It logged another 362 between January and August 2025.

564.002024 (12 months)

362.00Jan to Aug 2025 (8 months)

2024 (12 months)	564.00
Jan to Aug 2025 (8 months)	362.00

Source: SANRAL figures quoted by Al Jazeera, 6 March 2026. The 2025 count covers only eight months.

That is more than 1 event every day, all year. Here are some of the attacks reported in the press.

Photo: Olga Ernst / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why do critics call the wall apartheid-era thinking?

Chris Nissen of the South African Human Rights Commission says the wall echoes the barriers built in the 1990s to cut informal settlements off from the road. He calls spending R180 million on a wall "deeply misplaced".

Tauriq Jenkins, who leads a group called Save Our Sacred Lands, calls it a "gross misallocation of public funds". ANC council official Ndithini Tyhido calls it the "South African Berlin Wall".

Residents add a second complaint. Gugulethu resident Linda Kabeni says nobody asked them. She says the city must hold a public participation process, the meetings where residents are heard before a project is approved. Khayelitsha resident Sanele Nkompela warns it will create "two Cape Towns".

Good Party councillor Chad Davids asks why the city can find money for a wall but not the same urgency for housing and clinics. Hill-Lewis put the city's housing backlog at about 600,000 homes.

What do the people who drive the road say back?

Their answer is practical. They want something between the highway and the blind spots where bricks are thrown from.

Emre Uygun, an FF Plus councillor, said after the August death: "We cannot continue waiting for more people to be injured or killed on the N2." He wants SANRAL, the city and the province to speed up the wall.

Hill-Lewis accuses the ANC of hypocrisy. He says it built the first barrier and now attacks the new one. He also says the city has written to SANRAL about highway security since 2021.

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Supporters include daily commuters from Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Blue Downs and the Helderberg, according to local reports. They are the people who use the road most.

Photo: Olga Ernst / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Who is actually in charge of the N2 here?

SANRAL spokesman Lwando Mahlasela said the agency was not consulted. He said responsibility for the N2 between the airport and the city centre is split between the province, the city and SANRAL.

So the city is paying for a wall on a road it does not fully control. Safety chief JP Smith said police cannot stand at every hotspot all the time. He said the city is supporting SAPS, not replacing it.

In October 2025 the city put about 45 more metro police on the corridor. It also uses CCTV with number plate readers, and SANRAL runs more than 280 cameras on the freeway.

Are the people of Khayelitsha victims of the same crime?

Yes, and this is the part the shouting often misses. Khayelitsha is a huge township next to the N2, and some of its people use the highway to get to work. Commuters like them already face rising taxi fares, as we reported in taxi fares after R30 petrol.

Khayelitsha recorded 43 murders in one SAPS quarterly count reported in December 2025. Its people live with the same crime the wall is meant to stop.

That is why even the wall's critics do not say the danger is made up. Their fight is about money, about being asked first, and about who the wall is really meant to protect. People keep moving to the Cape for jobs, as we reported in why everyone is moving to the Western Cape, and every one of them uses roads like this one.

Photo: Nick-D / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Is the wall already built?

No. Construction has not started. The plan is in the detailed design phase, and the bulk of the money is only due in the 2027 financial year.

The last wall along the N2 was put up about 20 years ago. It has largely collapsed. The new one has been argued about for 10 months and is still on paper.

On the Hell Run, that matters. In the time it took to announce, argue over and budget for the wall, the road kept logging more than one crime event a day. A woman was hit by a cement block in April. A 16-year-old died in August. The wall is still a drawing.