“Oh My Gosh”: Mzansi Reacts to Pothole So Deep It Swallowed an Old Man’s Walking Stick in Viral Clip
- An elderly Kariega man pressed his walking stick into a roadside pothole, and the entire stick disappeared into the ground
- South Africa is estimated to have 25 million potholes, and the Eastern Cape is among the worst-affected provinces in the country
- The pothole in the video sits in the middle of a public road and is deep enough to reach a grown person's hips
PAY ATTENTION: You can now search for all your favourite news and topics on Briefly News.
A Kariega man has given Mzansi a front-row seat to what South Africa’s roads have become, and the evidence was impossible to argue with.
Source: Facebook
On 15 April 2026, a Facebook user known as Lion August from Kariega, Eastern Cape, posted a clip of an elderly man measuring a pothole using his walking stick. The stick did not stop halfway. It did not stop at all.
The walking stick was hip-high on the old man, and the road took every centimetre of it. That pothole was not on the shoulder or a back road somewhere. It was sitting dead in the middle of a public road. August captioned the clip with a question Mzansi could not answer: how deep is the deepest pothole?
This is bigger than one pothole
What hit people so hard is that this is not a once-off story from one unlucky street. South Africa has an estimated 25 million potholes, and that number has been growing year on year. The South African National Roads Agency reported a 67% jump in potholes over a five-year stretch. The Eastern Cape sits among the hardest-hit provinces because heavy rainfall tears into cracked tar fast. A small crack in the road lets water in, and water underground turns a surface problem into a sinkhole situation.
PAY ATTENTION: stay informed and follow us on Google News!
The roads themselves are exhausted, too. The Department of Transport has confirmed that around 80% of South Africa’s national roads have lived past their 20-year design life. Getting them back to a safe standard would cost the country more than R200 billion. That bill has been on the table for years, and nobody has picked it up.
A walking stick said what no government report could
The old man in the video pressed his walking stick into the road, and the ground made the point for him. The hole was deep enough that a grown person standing in it would disappear from the feet to the waist. That is not a pothole by any reasonable definition anymore.
See the pothole in the Facebook clip below:
Mzansi reacts to the shocking size of the hole
Briefly News compiled some comments from the post below.
Michael Olivier commented:
“Yoh! That's not a pothole, that's a wishing well. 😲”
Brian Kin said:
“That one is for Ramaphosa to swim in. It's his chance now. 😉”
Mbulelo Manana noted:
“Imagine at night you don't know the road, and your car hits that hole.”
Samantha van Zyl wrote:
“Oh my gosh! What if a child jumps into the puddle in a playful way? This is shocking! “
Susann Jordaan said;
“Plant a tree in there so that people can at least see it. Imagine if you drive into it.”
Ziona Van Den Heever commented:
“I bet you that hole stretches underneath that tar. That man is standing above that hole. That's a water leak. A person could fall and die and get stuck under that road.”
Source: Facebook
More about Mzansi potholes
- Briefly News previously reported that after attracting local attention, Helen Zille's snorkelling in a Johannesburg pothole surprisingly garnered international attention.
- The City of Johannesburg reportedly dispatched repair machinery to Balder Road in Douglasdale after a long-standing water leak and pothole caused major community frustration.
- Johannesburg's mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, swam in a pothole to highlight the city's infrastructure issues.
PAY ATTENTION: Follow Briefly News on Twitter and never miss the hottest topics! Find us at @brieflyza!
Source: Briefly News
