The applicable Gauteng freeways were declared as e-toll highways and they began open road tolling on 3 December 2013.

In the mid-1980s, a road bypass was constructed around Grahamstown (now Makhanda), to prevent traffic between Port Elizabeth and East London from driving through the townships following Apartheid uprisings (which were progressively getting more heated at the time), making it unsafe for motorists.

This road cutting contained an important 360 million year old fossil site previously researched by Robert W. Gess.

In 1999 SANRAL teamed up with Gess to assist with salvage blocks of a black shale from the cutting to prevent their loss to science.

A few of the note-worthy fossils from Waterloo Farm include those of the first four-legged creatures (tetrapods) from Africa – Tutusius umlambo and Umzantsia amazana, as well as many other vertebrates such as Placodermi (e.g., Bothriolepis africana; Groenlandaspis riniensi), Acanthodii (e.g., Diplacanthus acus), Chondrichthyes (e.g., Antarctilamna ultima), Actinopterygii and Sarcopterigii (e.g., Serenichthys kowiensis).

Agnatha included the worlds oldest fossil lamprey (Priscomyzon riniensis), the recently described juvenile which overturned our assumptions about vertebrates ancestry.