Pioneering road construction at the foot of Africa

Driving along the highly developed network of highways, roads and mountain passes that connect the urban and rural settlements of South Africa, it is quite easy, in this modern day, to take for granted the relative ease with which one is able to get from point A to B.

Yet, less than two centuries ago, this was not nearly the case, with the only network of ‘roads’ to speak of being a few rough wagon tracks crisscrossing the Cape Peninsula and the Drakenstein valley, well-worn footpaths and ancient animal migrancy routes.

The development of road infrastructure in this country is a relatively recent undertaking, with the first professionally engineered and constructed road, the Franschoek Pass, on the R45, being completed only in 1823. And it must be considered a late undertaking in the sense that the Cape of Good Hope had been an established victualing station for more than 150 years and that there were already well-established agricultural, viticulture and forestry industries across the Cape by the turn of the nineteenth century. But it was for precisely this reason – that the Cape did indeed have a well-established agricultural trading sector and required decent infrastructure on which to transport goods to the main market of Cape Town – that the first professionally engineered road was built.

While European settlement had initially been confined to the Cape Peninsula, after the turn of the eighteenth century, some of the more adventurous and free-spirited colonists, aptly named the trekboers, had braved the extremely rugged terrain of the Hottentots-Holland mountains, which formed a natural barrier to the country’s vast hinterland, to live, farm and hunt free from the control of the Dutch East India Company. After a century of such migration and natural population increase, the hinterland that became known as the Overberg (the land to the east of the Hottentots-Holland) was a well-inhabited and thriving farming area. These farmers produced a variety of produce, all of which were suitable for trading in the established market of Cape Town. However, getting that produce over the Hottentots-Holland was an extremely difficult feat.

While the Cape administrators cannot be said to have been wholly unsympathetic to such logistical challenges, it was only with the arrival of Lord Charles Somerset, who would occupy the position of governor of the Cape Colony between 1814 and 1826, that any real effort was made to address such difficulties and aid economic expansion across a broader area of the Cape. (It will be elaborated at a later point that it was, in fact, Somerset who pioneered significant infrastructure development in the Cape during the early 1820s.)

Somerset was fully alive to the logistical plight of the far-flung farmers and, thus, in 1818, his administration contracted the services of a local farmer, SJ Cats, to build a mountain pass connecting the Overberg with the Drakenstein valley. The route Cats decided to develop edged over the northern toe of a mountain known as the Middagkransberg. It followed an ancient migrancy route used by the now long-extinct elephants that used to roam the Franschoek valley. (Interestingly, before the settlement of the French Huguenots, the valley was called Olifantshoek, or Elephants Corner.) However, because Cats had no formal training, the resulting road proved considerably dangerous – to the extent that wagons could only carry a maximum load of just eight bags of corn.

Somerset realised that a more professional project would have to be undertaken and, in 1822, he commissioned Major William Cuthbert Holloway (of the Royal Engineers) to construct a proper pass through the mountains.

It is said that the particular timing of that commission was compelled by the fact that there were 150 soldiers of the Royal Africa Corps sojourning in Cape Town while on their way to Sierra Leone. The habits of these soldiers were so “irregular and cases so desperate” that it was suggested they be put to work building the pass so that they would be “prevented from committing violence and depredation on the inhabitants” of Cape Town. In addition to the company of soldiers, civilian artisans were also employed on the project at what was considered very high rates of wages.

The pass, 9 km long, took roughly a year to complete, at a total cost of £8 390. (In today’s terms, that would equate to just over R10-million.)

The project did not prove exceptionally challenging. It had an average gradient of 1:32 and reached an elevation point of 742 m. The only notable feat was the construction a 5 m bridge across a steep valley. This bridge, called Jan Joubert’s Gat, still exists today, being incorporated into later constructions, and is the oldest bridge still in use. It was declared a National Monument in 1979.

Another fascinating historical aspect of this pass, which is now situated in the Hottentots-Holland Nature Reserve, is that some of the original structures, including the old toll building and the ruins of the village used by the soldier-workers, can still be seen today.

Needless to say, Somerset was lambasted by the British government for such excessive expenditure on what was ultimately just a mountain road. However, he justified the project on the basis that “one of the great evils under which this colony has laboured has been the extreme difficulty of communication with the interior in consequence of the impracticability of the passages across the ridge of mountains which separate the peninsula from the remote areas”.

The pass only served as the main gateway to the Overberg for seven years until it was eclipsed by the much more direct route of Sir Lowry’s Pass, which was completed in 1830. However, traffic from Franschhoek and Paarl continued to use the route.

Holloway’s construction proved exceptionally sturdy for the next century: it was not until 1932 that a maintenance and geometric improvement project was commissioned for the pass, and this was only part of a broader roadworks development initiative to provide employment during the Great Depression years. The bitumen surface, which now coats the famous pass, was laid out as part of a further improvement project undertaken in the 1960s.