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.

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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...