Property

The sinkhole that closed roads and harmed businesses

Daily Investor • 29 January 2026

The sinkhole on John Vorster Drive in Centurion has caused tremendous damage to businesses and has been a significant point of frustration for residents for years.

The sinkhole, located between Nellmapius Drive and Marco Polo Street on John Vorster Drive, formed in mid-December 2022.

Like most other potholes in the area, it was triggered by a combination of heavy seasonal rains and the underlying dolomite.

Dolomite is a sedimentary rock, similar to limestone, and is uniquely vulnerable to a process called chemical weathering.

Most sinkholes in Centurion are caused by leaking water pipes or stormwater runoff after heavy rains.

The water washes the soil into the underground dolomite cavities. Eventually, the ground becomes a hollow shell that can no longer support its own weight.

This is what happened when a sinkhole formed in December 2022 in Centurion, which caused tremendous disruption in the region.

One section of John Vorster Drive was immediately closed, and motorists had to snake through the area to reach their destination.

Instead of a full repair, the City of Tshwane constructed a crossover road, completed in June 2023, to bypass the affected area.

As of early 2026, the sinkhole remains largely unrehabilitated. The area around the sinkhole is essentially a no-go zone.

Businesses in the area have been severely affected. In 2023, Hasa Raju of Kruger Supermarket and Kitchen on Kruger Avenue said he has been running at a loss since the sinkhole formed.

He explained that many clients just turned back when they saw the problems around the area, which cost all businesses in the region money.

The businesses urged the City of Tshwane to repair the sinkholes as soon as possible, but this has not happened.

The City of Tshwane blames budget constraints

Last year, Tshwane’s MMC for Cooperative and Shared Services, Kholofelo Morodi, said severe financial constraints make addressing the problem challenging.

“Currently, the budget allocated to address the sinkholes is R14 million,” Morodi told BusinessTech in March 2025.

“This is insufficient compared to the estimated R200 million required to resolve the issue in Region 4 alone.”

To address the crisis, the municipality planned to formally request the National Government to declare the sinkhole situation a National Disaster.

“Doing so would enable access to additional funding from the national disaster centre needed to fix the existing sinkholes plaguing the city,” she said.

The city has been prioritising smaller, low-priority sinkholes while the massive ones, like the one on John Vorster, remain in bypass mode.

Despite a pledge to fix nine priority sites by the end of 2025, five remain untouched, including many disruptive ones.

The city cited procurement challenges and the persistent summer rains as the main reasons for the missed deadlines.

Residents and businesses have begun taking action against the City of Tshwane, arguing that it is neglecting its duty to maintain infrastructure.

In a landmark case last year, the High Court ordered the City of Tshwane to pay damages to Crawdaddy’s in Centurion for loss of profit caused by a nearby sinkhole.

The court rejected the city’s defence of insufficient funds, ruling that it was negligent in its duty to maintain infrastructure and repair the road in a reasonable time.

This has set an important legal precedent, potentially opening the floodgates for other businesses in John Vorster and the surrounding areas to sue the city for their losses.

Daily Investor visited the sinkhole in John Vorster Drive in January 2026 and took photos of the area to illustrate the disruption.