New depths in (second) sinkhole saga: Is illegal mining to blame?

A large sinkhole appeared on a main arterial road in Boksburg yesterday, diagonally opposite a giant hole that appeared in February this year.

It’s on a portion of Rondebult Road, a main thoroughfare in Ekurhuleni, East Rand.

The tarmac in between has become buckled and is impassable by car, is dangerous on foot and may cost millions to rehabilitate.

“It is a disaster,” said community activist Hilary Coke.

She spent most of the day guarding the site and sending pedestrians and onlookers, taking pictures, on their way.

“It is dangerous, unstable ground,” she said, and noted that parts of the pavement continued to collapse throughout the day.

The portion of the affected road lies between the Boksburg suburbs of Comet and Reiger Park and is a stone’s throw from the Angelo informal settlement where a gas leak, allegedly related to illegal mining activity, killed 14 people in July.

Coke said the sinkholes were a result of the same activity.

“There are tunnels all around here, and shallow zama zama tunnelling poses a great threat to homes, factories and infrastructure. I have no idea why nothing has been done about that,” she said.

Ekurhuleni spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said: “We are aware of the new sinkhole on the other side of Rondebult.”

But he denied it was a result of illegal mining.

“Ekurhuleni is highly dolomitic and this can be attributed to that. The Council for Geoscience did confirm this had nothing to do with mining.”

However, Coke is not buying this explanation. Dlamini said work to repair the sinkholes will start before month-end.

Democratic Alliance (DA) ward councillor Marius de Vos said: “I must express my disgust at the delayed response by the municipality and the department of mineral resources to have the sinkhole rehabilitated.

“If swift action was taken to rehabilitate the road earlier this year after investigations were done, the expansion of the sinkhole could have been detected.”

But Dlamini said the city had taken immediate action after the first sinkhole surfaced.

“We attended to it from day one. That is why we reported it to the Council for Geoscience and the department of minerals and energy. This is also why we are putting plans and resources in place to attend to both sinkholes.”

De Vos also lashed out at the city’s emergency services. He said disaster management services had only arrived after 2pm, about six hours after Coke first reported the incident.

Senior Ekurhuleni DA councillor Simon Lapping said this was not the first time emergency services had a delayed response to a dangerous situation.

He noted that while there had been no final report forthcoming, the lack of a response from emergency services could have saved lives at other serious events in Boksburg, including the Christmas Eve gas tanker explosion last year.

De Vos said while the road was closed, users remained in danger, because of the makeshift barriers that had been in place since the beginning of the year.

He said the city had done nothing about protecting motorists.

“The makeshift barriers put up here by the compost farmer (next to the sinkhole) are clear indications of the state of affairs of the municipality,” said De Vos.

“It seems there is one set of safety rules for the municipality and another for private persons. I have again pleaded with the roads depot manager to dispatch a team to put up proper barriers on both sides of the road.”

Lapping said makeshift barriers were a disaster waiting to happen and mentioned several accidents and deaths caused by poorly barriered roadworks.