Johannesburg – It’s hard to miss the skull on the large concrete block lying nearly toppled in the veld in Marlands, near Germiston.
The danger sign warns visitors that this land overgrown with weeds is an old mine shaft, but even it is falling into a sinkhole.
But behind the sign, and alongside the numerous cavernous sinkholes that swallow the earth, construction workers employed by the Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality are laying the foundations for about 300 new housing structures.
This is where, over the next few months, the municipality plans to relocate several thousand impoverished residents of the nearby Angelo informal settlement.
Jean du Plessis, a DA ward committee member for safety and security, looks outraged. As he dodges the sinkholes, he cites the death of 5-year-old Richard Thole, who fell into a nearby disused mine shaft in Jerusalem informal settlement last month.
“How are you going to keep a child out of these sinkholes, or the open mine shaft over there?” he says, frustrated, pointing to the open shaft, entangled with weeds.
“This is an old mine, the ground is poisonous. And there’s a railway line 200m away. People can’t live here.”
In 2015, Living Africa Properties secured a court order to remove the residents of the informal settlement for development as it is located on private land.
But the DA claims the “safety of the soon-to-be residents cannot be guaranteed as no environmental impact assessment has been conducted” on the land where they will be moved.
