The small Gauteng suburb whose roads are being swallowed by sinkholes

The quaint neighbourhood of Lyttelton Manor in Gauteng is suffering from an invasion of sinkholes that are eating up many of its roads.

These treacherous natural disasters take months and years to be mended by the relevant authorities, more often than not years, with citizens even going so far as to ask for the area to be declared a disaster zone.

The sinkhole epidemic took a turn for the worse following the recent bouts of intense rain that hit the area.

The latest incident saw a massive sinkhole appear on the corner of Burger Avenue and Langebrink Road in Lyttelton Manor on Friday, 9 May 2025.

Early morning the ground fell away below the curb right where the two roads meet, and it has continued to grow ever since.

The authorities swiftly cordened off the area and have dug out a big portion of the pathway to determine the extent of the damage.

Not only was this sinkhole partly under a substation that provides electricity to the suburb, but also very close to a busy school right across the road, as well as a historic church.

There was no ongoing activity when we passed there on a Tuesday afternoon at 13h00, not a worker nor a machine in sight.

Only parents and granparents picking up their children at the school, and a few people going about their business on the church grounds.

Further along Burger Avenue, barely a block away, is another sinkhole that has been there since August 2022.

It has been blocking off four home entrances all this time, with affected homeowners having to plead with their neighbours to go through their yards just to safely access a road.

One road up from Burger Avenue, in Monument Avenue, there are four sinkholes in the span of 220 metres, obstructing homes, businesses, and commuters.

Not far away from away from here, on Clifton Avenue close to a hospital and high school, is an enormous sinkhole that has been slowly growing in size since 2019.

It partly destroyed two properties, forcing the owners to abandon their homes to this day for their own safety.

The local government has gone so far as to build a solid metal bridge over the sinkhole so that the many pedestrians who use this route can still get through, however, not much has been done in pursuit of fixing it.

Another recent incident in Van Riebeeck Avenue saw the corner of a home’s boundary wall suddenly fall away into a cavernous sinkhole.

The sinkhole, which is several metres deep, broke the underground water infrastructure, forcing the city to reroute plastic pipes across the now blocked-off road so that the home could still access municipal services.

On the positive side, over the last two years the government has repaired two sinkholes that were impeding two very important thoroughfares.

One was located on the M10, a connector road between Lyttelton Manor and Valhalla, and the other was situated on the side of one of the busiest interchanges on the N1.

The N1 sinkhole in particular took 35 months to repair, shocking when you consider that it’s on one of the most important and busiest roads in the entire country.

Compare this to a nearby incident that took place less than 5km away on Main Road, Irene.

In February 2023, a sinkhole appeared on Main Road which the relevant roads authority responded to by closing off the entire through-road which is used by over 20,000 commuters a day.

Seeing the state of sinkholes in the surrounding area that have been left untended for years, citizens of the Irene suburb took action and banded together to donate money and get the road back into usable shape.

The total sum needed was in the realm of R448,000, but the amount raised surpassed R477,000.

By the end of April 2023, Main Road was usable once again thanks to the efforts of these Irene inhabitants.

This particular repair was carried out by the Irene Landowners’ Assocation. Had it been left to government, just like the others, chances are Main Road would’ve been unusable to this day.

The table below details all the sinkholes we saw on a short drive through Lyttelton and Lyttelton Manor, as well as the surrounding areas of Centurion and Valhalla, on 20 May 2025.

To find the exact locations of these dangers, you can click on the underlined links to use the What3Words global navigation system, or manually punch in the three-word sequence connected to each sinkhole.

The frequent sinkholes have left many residents without water and electricity for days, even weeks on end.

The crisis has likely also contributed to a gradual taper in property transactions in the area.

Data from Property24 shows that sales in Lyttelton Manor peaked in 2022 and have been on a gradual decline ever since.

This shows an inverse correlation to the number of sinkholes that have popped up in the area over this period.

Driving through the area, we indeed saw many street corners and fences filled with “For Sale” signs.

Centurion’s R180-million sinkhole crisis

The City of Tshwane has confirmed that there are as many as 63 sinkholes across the metro, many of which are found in Lyttelton and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

The Gauteng Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs has “visited” the area to “examine” the sinkholes, but so far not much has been done about them.

As per an IOL report, the Centurion municipality has only been able to set aside R14.7 million to tackle the sinkhole crisis.

However, Kholofelo Morodi, MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, noted that this is about R180 million less than the municipality needs to completely rid the area of these hazards.

“We understand the residents’ frustrations and that’s why we want to work together with the national government to come on board and help us reduce this for the sake of our residents, especially given our financial position,” he said.

Much of the blame for sinkholes has been placed on dolomite rock that lies below large parts of Centurion and Lyttelton.

The rock dissolves over several years as water seeps into the ground, forming a cavity that can collapse into itself at any given moment.

The water can come from rain or, in most cases, human activity.

Leaking pipes and clogged stormwater infrastructure, usually a result of poor maintenance, sees liquids slowly trickling into the ground and dissolving the underlying minerals.

While dolomite washes away faster than other types of rock, no area is totally immune to sinkholes.

The image by Scielo below shows the distribution of “instability events” and dolomite land across Gauteng, with Centurion proving to be one of the most heavily-affected regions.

There are safeguards in place to avoid building roads in sinkhole-prone areas as well as to repair the disasters as soon as they happen.

In the planning phase of a new route, the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) performs a process called “ground-penetrating radar” to scan for dolomite and cavities.

However, in light of around 25% of the land in Gauteng being affected by the mineral, it is not always possible to completely steer clear of it.

In the scenario where it’s impossible to avoid dolomite, Sanral said it relies upon “other solutions” to keep road goers safe.

One of these is erecting underground concrete pillars at the onset of a building project in an affected area to reduce the risk of sinkholes damaging the finished structure down the line.

If the unavoidable happens, though, the agency said that the size of the sinkhole will determine the type of reparations.

A small cavity can be filled with rocks and compacted, but larger ones need more extensive restitutions such as building a reinforced concrete slab above the cavity that would allow a road to be laid on top.

Sinkhole 1 – Clifton Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 2 – C/O Langebrink Road and Burger Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 3 – Burger Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 4 – Monument Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 5 – Monument Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 6 – Monument Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 7 – Monument Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 8 – D.F. Malan Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 9 – Hans Strijdom Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 10 – C/O Trichardt Road and Van Riebeeck Avenue, Lyttelton Manor

Sinkhole 11 – John Vorster Drive, Centurion

Sinkhole 12 – Paul Kruger Road, Valhalla