Driving through parts of River Park, the gaping potholes are the first thing visitors notice.

However, it is not the potholes themselves that leave the strongest impression, nor the water constantly trickling past homes and slowly eating away at what is left of the asphalt; it is the quiet resignation of residents who have concluded that things will never change.

Theo Lengwati, a Ward 81 activist, said the issue comes down to a basic failure of service delivery. In phase 2 alone, he said, more than nine storm water drains in a single block are blocked. According to Lengwati, residents have been raising the issue with the relevant municipal entity for roughly four years, with no meaningful response. “All we get is an acknowledgement: ‘We have noted that the issue is there’. We never get any turnaround times,” he said.

Read more: Activist demands action as water leaks worsen River Park roads decay

The frustration is sharpened by the fact that River Park’s stagnation has coincided with sizeable, publicised capital commitments to the city’s roads. In June 2025, Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) announced the City of Johannesburg’s capital injection of R2.8b over three years, with R912.81m allocated for the agency’s programmes in the 2025/26 financial year. London Road, which runs adjacent to River Park, featured on the list of roads the agency committed to attend to, but River Park itself did not feature. The agency’s statement made no reference to the area at all.

What sharpens residents’ sense of neglect, Lengwati says, is watching JRA mobilise elsewhere in the city while River Park waits. On August 18, JRA cleared blocked storm water drains along several streets in Alexandra, framing the work on Facebook as a flood-prevention operation. River Park, meanwhile, remains exposed to the same flood risk.

Lengwati said the issues in River Park cannot only be attributed to JRA. Johannesburg Water, he noted, bears equal responsibility. “When you look at every part that’s been affected by potholes, there’s some sort of water leak, some sort of drainage that isn’t working,” he said. “When it rains here, it gets bad.”

By his account, the last time residents saw JRA on the ground in River Park was in 2021 and 2022, shortly after the ward’s councillor was newly elected, when phase 3’s roads were reinstated. Since then, he said not much has happened. “People really do want services, they need services, and they are willing to participate and work together with the City of Johannesburg, but residents of River Park feel neglected.”

Also read: No budget for River Park road repairs, JRA admits

That sense of abandonment, Lengwati said, has consequences beyond frustration, as it shapes behaviour. It is not uncommon to see residents pouring laundry water onto the roadside, where it eventually seeps into the already cracked asphalt and accelerates the very road infrastructure decay they are complaining about. Lengwati framed this as a symptom of exhaustion. “A lot of them have given up. In fact, that is why you will find that the behaviour in this community is contributing to what is happening, because it is a matter of ‘We have given up. No one is coming to help us’,” he said.

Lengwati is calling on the municipal entities to intervene directly, rather than leave residents to keep raising complaints that go nowhere.

Johannesburg Roads Agency’s head of department for infrastructure development Kwazelela Mcetywa said JRA does not have an existing road upgrade programme in River Park, and road assessments will have to be conducted when the budget is available in order to establish the correct intervention required.

He noted, however, that the maintenance work has been ongoing in the area. He said the agency’s stormwater team was in the area on August 29, clearing multiple blocked drains.

Johannesburg Water, on the other hand. said it routinely attends to reported faults in River Park. It further confirmed that it was aware of the Mapane Street leak and has escalated the matter to the relevant operation team for assessment and intervention.

Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok for the latest updates!