Residents of several areas in Gauteng said they felt the earth shake last night and this morning.

The first – and only confirmed – seismic-like event was reported 10.2km southeast of Randfontein in the West Rand.

Volcano Discovery, a global initiative that provides quake information, received 892 reports of the event, which occurred just before 21:30. The website states this was a ‘light magnitude 3.5 earthquake at 5km depth’.

Caxton Local Media spoke to Council for Geoscience chief scientist Eldridge Kgaswane who confirmed the earthquake, but noted that the South African National Seismograph Network recorded the quake at a magnitude of 3.2.

Kgaswane said their revised location of the epicentre is Doornkop, Soweto. This coincides with 17 reports on Volcano Discovery that noted a possible tremor or earthquake 5km northeast of Soweto.

“The epicentre is in between Soweto and Randfontein, so the reports might be from the same earthquake. Our analysts are currently looking at aftershocks and possible foreshocks of this earthquake,” he added.

Kgaswane explained that their automated system, which generates reports for their website, is currently offline and that they have to manually analyse these seismic events.

He said the third reported event on Volcano Discovery – 62km north of Vereeniging in the Sedibeng District Municipality, reported just after 04:00 – will be investigated.

Residents took to X (formerly Twitter) to share their experiences:

Randfontein people, we’re dying. Another tremor

— kidb1 (@kidib1_m) August 30, 2023

Who else felt that earthquake /Tremor ? I sure did in Randfontein #earthquake #Tremor

— Dimpho (@Dimpho88107797) August 30, 2023

Damn that was huge! People felt in Randfontein. #tremor

— BANG 10 (@TataneMabasa) August 30, 2023

The wining of the two GIANT teams of Soweto has caused the tremor to hit around Soweto… pic.twitter.com/UfxFRgMabN

— @pkdreamchaser (@pk47432116) August 30, 2023

@SAWeatherServic still doesnt know there was #earthquake #tremor in #Johannesburg #roodepoort #Soweto almost an hour ago. Like the floods and snowfalls, they’ll only learn about it from social media – maybe on Friday. One of the most useless institution in SA.

— Bambatha🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦 (@Bhambat28212406) August 30, 2023