The roads in one South African province are so bad that people use their own money to fix them

The collapse of Mpumalanga’s road infrastructure has reached such desperate levels that farmers in rural areas use their own funds and equipment to repair roads.

The state of Mpumalanga’s road infrastructure is a critical issue that heavily impacts local communities, economic drivers, and the province’s vital tourism sector. 

The situation is a mix of severe logistical strain, budget backlogs, and structural deterioration in the province.

One of the major contributors is the bottlenecks in South Africa’s commercial rail network, run by Transnet.

The result is that hundreds of heavy trucks carrying chrome, coal, and magnetite move across provincial roads daily toward the Maputo port in Mozambique.

Roads around Lydenburg, eMalahleni, and Belfast were never engineered to sustain this volume of heavy axle loads, essentially pulverising the base layers of the tarmac.

Mpumalanga is also prone to heavy summer downpours, which can cause severe flooding during the rainy season.

These floods wash away entire sections of road, creating massive sinkholes, and rapidly expanding existing pothole networks into deep, structural craters.

While the national highways managed by SANRAL are kept in good condition, the secondary roads branching off from them are poorly maintained.

It has become so severe that privately funded road repairs are needed even though billions were officially earmarked for road maintenance.

The national government allocated R1.5 billion to the province through the Provincial Roads Maintenance Grant (PRMG).

The provincial Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport has a total budget of approximately R6 billion for the 2026/27 financial year.

The Department also recently procured 19 new bulldozers valued at approximately R50 million, which were officially received in March 2026.

“These figures are in stark contrast to the reality on the grassroots level,” said Werner Weber, a member of the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature.

He said that the FF Plus branch in Piet Retief repaired 170 potholes on the road between Piet Retief and Wittenberg in the past month alone.

“Even though billions are budgeted, and 19 new bulldozers have been procured, many farmers see no tangible improvements to the province’s roads,” he said.

He said that they demand greater accountability and insist that the budgeted funds must be used for road repairs and maintenance.

He added that farmers in Mpumalanga should not bear the burden of the government’s failures in the province.

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Photos of Mpumalanga’s road infrastructure collapse

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