South Africa: 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...

AllAfrica publishes around 600 reports a day from more than 90 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

AllAfrica is a voice of, by and about Africa - aggregating, producing and distributing 600 news and information items daily from over 90 African news organizations and our own reporters to an African and global public. We operate from Cape Town, Dakar, Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Washington DC.

Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox

To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you.

There was a problem processing your submission. Please try a