UNSTABLE GROUND: Roads, shops, factories and homes threatened by sinkholes as illegal mining hollows out Joburg

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.

Across parts of Johannesburg, roads are collapsing into underground voids, factories are being cut off from transport routes, sinkholes are opening inside residential estates, and businesses in busy commercial corridors are discovering tunnels beneath their premises, as illegal miners strip away the support pillars once designed to stabilise the ground above.

During an oversight tour last week with the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) and Kenny Kunene, the mayoral committee member (MMC) responsible for transport, media visited some of the areas now being destabilised by illegal mining activity beneath the city’s surface.

From Roodepoort and Booysens to Wemmer and Witpoortjie, the damage is spreading far beyond abandoned mine dumps – leaving the City of Johannesburg facing infrastructure reconstruction costs likely to run into billions while residents and businesses warn the crisis is escalating faster than authorities can contain it.

The visit began at Nick Toomey Road in Roodepoort, once a key arterial route linking Main Reef Road and Ontdekkers Road.

The road has been closed since 2019 and now lies abandoned, overgrown with weeds and completely impassable after years of subsidence linked to illegal mining beneath the area.

Ward 127’s councillor, Keke Tabane, said the closure had crippled traffic flow in the surrounding communities.

“The community around here is very distressed at the closing of Nick Toomey Road. It was a main thoroughfare and now people have to drive around. It is also causing major traffic congestion every day,” he said.

Tabane said sinkholes began developing along the route before tunnelling intensified and infrastructure beneath the road was damaged.

“There was a huge brick factory on the road, and it was forced to relocate because trucks could not get in and out to load bricks. The closure effectively cut off truck access to it and other business on that road.”

The abandoned road has since deteriorated into a crumbling strip of broken tar, overgrown vegetation and overflowing sewage.

Tabane said he had repeatedly raised the issue with the City and that even a 2022 oversight visit failed to produce meaningful intervention.

The illegal miners have also cut through water and sewerage infrastructure in the area, leaving wastew