Things fall apart in the ageing Free State gold fields
Illegal mining, failing infrastructure, proliferating cesspools, a broke and heavily indebted municipality — the decay seen in Thabong is spreading
In the township of Thabong in the Free State‚ sewage runs down several roads. Crime has picked up because every single street lamp along its main road has been cut down and sold for scrap‚ leaving residents in darkness. Thabong forms part of the Matjhabeng municipality‚ which has gained a reputation for being one of the worst-run municipalities in the country. The reasons for Matjhabeng’s notoriety are visible everywhere in Thabong‚ which is outside Welkom. Children and adults navigate puddles of wastewater to leave their homes. In some of the more affluent suburbs‚ water leaks spring as if out of nowhere, numbering as many as 400 on some days. TimesLIVE visited the city of Welkom and its neighbouring gold-mining towns last week and found evidence of a dying local economy‚ with a municipality trying hard to keep the facade from crumbling. In Welkom central‚ it is not easy to spot the telltale signs of a city in decline‚ but on the outskirts abandoned buildings and stripped-out shops...
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