Illegal gold mining is tearing apart Johannesburg’s infrastructure, with roads collapsing into sinkholes, water pipes damaged and electricity cables stolen across several suburbs, according to EWN. Wemmer Pan Road has cracked and sunk, while homes in Roodepoort and Denver are cracking and falling into holes left by unlicensed miners tunneling beneath them. “Now there are shootouts in the area. It is scary,” said Roodepoort resident Voneen Trompeter.
The City of Johannesburg says the damage has become too severe to treat as isolated incidents. “The City of Johannesburg is intensifying its interventions because the scale of damage caused by illegal mining can no longer be treated as an isolated issue,” said MMC for Transport Kenny Kunene, according to a City of Johannesburg statement. Kunene said repair crews cannot safely reach damaged sites: “Joburg Water cannot come and work here, and JRA cannot repair pipes and roads because zama-zamas start shooting.”
Mining expert David van Wyk estimates more than 34,000 irregular miners, known locally as zama zamas and drawn largely from Lesotho and Mozambique, operate across South Africa, some earning up to 15,000 rand a day. City Power spokesman Isaac Mangena said the underground activity has put substations, transformers and transmission towers at risk of sinking, with cavities in some areas reaching 22 meters deep in the hardest-hit Regions C and F, including Roodepoort, Witpoortjie and Selby.
President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed military troops across Gauteng province in March to back police operations against illegal mining and related crime, and the city is now seeking further support from the South African National Defence Force. Johannesburg Roads Agency CEO Zweli Nyathi said repeated repairs have become unsustainable: “It becomes unsustainable for municipal entities to repeatedly rehabilitate infrastructure damaged by illegal mining.”
The crisis traces back to Johannesburg’s 1880s gold rush, which built the city atop hundreds of abandoned mining shafts along the main gold reef. Van Wyk predicts conditions will keep worsening as armed, round-the-clock mining crews exploit the old workings, a pattern already seen in Carletonville and Bapong village, where similar illegal operations have taken hold.
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