Hillcrest author’s book journey continues
Dr Malcolm Mitchell has written and launched his second book.
WITH a career that spans the length of many of the highways in South Africa, Hillcrest’s Dr Malcolm Mitchell is a veritable fountain of knowledge when it comes to roadways in the country and recently released his second book, The Road to Development – A 160-Year History of the N3 Road from Durban to Johannesburg.
The sprightly 85-year-old said that even though he didn’t study it in school, he has always had a passion for history, from European history to world history and politics. This, coupled with his vast understanding of roads, led him to pen his first book with Brian Downie. Travels in the South – A History of South African Roads is a beautifully bound hardback book filled a deeper understanding of the web of roads across the country. Interspersed among its pages are colourful images that give readers a precise visual to the surrounding text.
The professional engineer, who has more than 60 years of experience in both the private and public sector for civil engineering, graduated from the University of Natal in 1956. He has two doctorates (transportation engineering and transportation economics) and a master’s degree in administration.
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He worked for the railways in construction and formed part of the team that built the longest railway tunnel (4 miles) in South Africa. During his professional career he oversaw the construction of roads, railway lines and tunnels to road pavement engineering and roads and urban transport planning and design. He took up a position as an engineer in the Department of Transport and, after years of hard work, was offered the position of deputy director-general for the department. When he retired in 1998, Mitchell started his own consultancy business.
The idea to piece together the Road to Development came about during the Covid-19 pandemic and its subsequent nationwide lockdown.
“I thought it would be a good idea to write about the N3, a major road in South Africa and the most economically important road in the country. A lot of this was research, going through documents and it took about 15 months to gather and collate all of the relevant information,” he smiled.
Even with his extensive grasp on the history of the roads in the country, Mitchell said he was only too pleased to have learnt a thing or two about the busy stretch of tar.
“The section of the M13 between Westville and Paradise Valley is the first freeway in South Africa,” he said. “This book brings to the fore very interesting facts and background as to the development to the most important road in the country and how its changed over 160 years.”
Copies of the book, The Road to Development, are available on the N3TC website.
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