Khutsong resident Rebecca Makgale next to one of the sinkholes in the township west of Johannesburg, 17 October 2022. Residents are living in fear as dwellings are being swallowed up by sinkholes. Pic: Nigel Sibanda
The Merafong City local municipality says it only intervened urgently in recent years regarding the sinkhole-ridden township of Khutsong, Carletonville, while the township had been slowly getting swallowed up for years.
Residents of the area in the west of Gauteng have had sleepless nights for years about the dangerous sinkhole situation where several houses have already sunken into the ground.
Speaking to The Citizen, the municipality’s acting executive director for economic development and planning Juan Smith said it was only recently when a war room for the Khutsong intervention programme was established and funding prioritised for the township’s resettlement plan, following the escalation of the matter to the Office of the President and the national department of human settlements.
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“Through the mandate given to the Housing Development Agency (HDA) by the national department of human settlements, a project management office is being established to coordinate the whole Khutsong resettlement implementation plan.
“Through the war room for the Khutsong intervention programme, driven by the Presidency and HDA, things are really starting to happen now, even though the local municipality has sought intervention since 2002,” said Smith.
Just as has been the case in the past, many residents have vowed not to relocate to other areas as they have invested their lives in the township.
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Another challenge faced by residents and the municipality is infrastructure that has been damaged by sinkholes.
Residents have also expressed concern recently about the predicted above normal rainfall for the current spring and coming summer seasons.
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Acting municipal manager Siyethemba Mdletshe said the mitigation measures for construction and maintenance on dolomitic land is very costly, saying additional funding to comply with design standards is not readily available to the municipality.
In 2016 the local municipality declared a local state of disaster through the West Rand district municipality, which was approved by the National Disaster Management Centre.
“As a result of the approval of the local state of disaster, R118 million was given and used for the reinstatement of collapsed water and sewer lines as well as for the rehabilitation of sinkholes in Khutsong.
“In addition, the municipality through the municipal infrastructure grant and the municipal human settlement development grant, has been implementing various projects to address sewer spillages and repair broken water mains in the Khutsong network over the last few years,” said Mdletshe.
He said for the current 2022/23 financial year, the local municipality is implementing a number of grant-funded projects in Khutsong, in a bid to address the infrastructure challenges caused by sinkholes.
Merafong City has been listed as one of the 10 municipalities that need financial and administrative rescue.
According to Smith this has to do with having just no budget to do maintenance on municipal infrastructure, let alone filling vacant positions.
“It is also important to note that there has also been a culture of non-payment for municipal services within the Khutsong communities and over the years this culture has just increased and in recent years, less than 5% of residents in Khutsong have been paying for their services.
“As you can imagine, this places a tremendous burden on the local authority to foot the bill for both Eskom and Rand Water,” Smith said.
Ben Van Der Berg from the Freedom Front Plus in Carletonville says the situation deteriorates by the day.
“We as residents have been faced with a huge crisis for many years now with the authorities doing little to deal with the situation.
“We have some residents who have been forced to leave their homes, some of which are on the brink of collapse, due to the sinkholes and we also don’t know what happened to the millions of rands that were set aside for the rehabilitation of Khutsong,” Van der Berg said.
In recent years, senior officials from the provincial government visited the area but residents who have spoken to The Citizen say nothing has happened, saying they have lost count of the number of visits by provincial authorities in recent years.
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Khutsong was established in 1977 and the first formal houses were constructed by the then Carletonville Town Council and the National Housing Committee.
In 1982, development in the town was stopped due to sinkhole and doline formation (the slow solutional removal of rock from the surface downward (solution doline), or by the collapse of overlying rock or overlying material into an underground cave or chamber (collapse doline)) and during this period, the number of informal settlements increased drastically.
In 1986 the ban on development in Khutsong was lifted. In that same year, SA Family Housing Trust declared approximately 34 hectares as development area (now known as Khutsong extension 2) which included 421 residential erven.
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