Pothole becomes ‘swimming pool’

“It is no longer a pothole. It is a dam, so we cannot blame the children for having a swim.”

This is how the residents of Evaton West, in the Emfuleni local municipality, described a massive pothole that shocked the public when children and a few adults were captured on social media swimming in it at the weekend, the Sowetan reports.

After the rains in Gauteng last week, the water in the pothole on the corner of Cemetery Road and the Golden Highway, rose to a point that residents saw it as a perfect place to cool off from the hot weather on Sunday.

Emfuleni spokesperson Makhosonke Sangweni said the municipality would contact the roads department.

Potholes are an ongoing problem across the country.

A year ago, TimesLIVE reported how a sinkhole in Fourways had become so deep that a resident was able to “take a bath” in it.

An infamous road which cuts through Giyani to Phalaborwa in Limpopo was so potholed, motorists said “you’d have to be drunk to drive on it in a straight line”.

In Nelson Mandela Bay metro, motorists resorted to paying volunteers to fix potholes.

— Sowetan