Sinkholes are collapsing major arterial roads, opening inside upmarket residential estates and even beneath shops and factories as illegal miners tunnel under Johannesburg, forcing businesses and residents to spend small fortunes on emergency repairs and temporary infrastructure just to keep operating. Daily Maverick’s Anna Cox reports.
Reporting by: Anna Cox
Filmed by: Malibongwe Tyilo
Edited by: Anda Tolibadi
Produced by: Emilie Gambade
Creative lead by: Malibongwe Tyilo
Sub-edited by: Caspar Greeff
Read more here.
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Across parts of Johannesburg, the ground is giving way. Roads are collapsing into underground voids, factories are being cut off from transport routes, and sinkholes are opening inside residential estates. In busy commercial corridors, business owners are discovering tunnels directly beneath their premises, all because illegal miners are stripping away the old support pillars once designed to stabilise the ground above.
During a recent oversight tour with the Johannesburg Roads Agency and Transport MMC Kenny Kunene, we saw the damage firsthand. It is spreading far beyond abandoned mine dumps, leaving the city facing infrastructure reconstruction costs likely to run into billions, while residents and businesses warn the crisis is escalating faster than authorities can contain it.
Look at Nick Toomey Road in Roodepoort. Once a key artery linking Main Reef and Ontdekkers roads, it has been closed since 2019. Today, it lies abandoned, overgrown with weeds, and flooded with raw sewage after years of subsidence.
And the city can’t just patch it. MMC Kunene says repair teams are being blocked by heavily armed illegal mining syndicates who threathen to shoot municipal workers. Because the actual underground support pillars left by historic mining operations are being hacked and blasted away, the land, roads, and stormwater systems are collapsing entirely and must be reconstructed from scratch.
The crisis is moving straight into neighborhoods and businesses too. At Witpoortjie Estate, an upmarket gated complex, a massive sinkhole has opened right by the security entrance, forcing residents onto a sandy side road. More holes are now opening near a children’s playground.
Over on the busy Albertina Sisulu Road, the threat is breaking through shop floors. Mike Motaung of King’s Butchery told me he walked into work one morning to find a gaping hole in his shop floor. Miners had broken through from a tunnel below and stolen his stock. A nearby hardware store suffered a similar raid, forcing businesses to spend small fortunes pouring concrete to reinforce their floors.
Down at Wemmer Pan Road, a major intersection linking the CBD with the southern suburbs has become a dark, dangerous no-go zone. The roads agency tried installing tracking sensors on traffic lights, but syndicates repeatedly stole the poles and cables. Eventually, the city gave up and removed the infrastructure entirely, leaving motorists vulnerable to criminals living in the surrounding bushes.
Further south in the Booysens industrial area, frustrated business owners took matters into their own hands. After waiting six years for intervention on collapsing streets that forced one factory to close, local businesses pooled R320,000 to build a temporary, single-lane bypass just to keep traffic moving.
As the tour progressed, Kunene adopted increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, describing illegal miners as “rats” and “sons of Satan”, while calling for military intervention alongside the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Johannesburg Metro Police Department.
Last week, the city announced a joint intervention involving the City, the SAPS and the South African Defence Force aimed at tackling illegal mining syndicates, hijacked buildings, infrastructure vandalism and organised criminal activity across Johannesburg.
The crackdown coincides with the city’s new R97.1-billion budget, which allocates R1.8-billion to roads and stormwater operations. DM