Space, infrastructure and budgets : a case of roads and stormwater maintenance in the City of Ekurhuleni, South Africa 2000-2020

Abstract

This thesis, Space, Infrastructure and Budgets: A Case of Roads and Stormwater Maintenance in the City of Ekurhuleni, South Africa 2000–2020 considers how repairs and maintenance of municipal infrastructures lie at the heart of developmental local government, in post-apartheid South Africa. The 1998 White Paper on Local Government provides the context and background which informs the thesis research. This white paper stated that apartheid had fundamentally damaged the spatial environment in local government, in particular the urban space.

This damage resulted in spatial injustice, which was the thesis of the apartheid city. Urbanism in itself is a contested terrain, which sees an assemblage of “simultaneous forces, movements, agents and politics that co-produce the nature of contemporary urbanism … planning and implementing urban infrastructure is hence at the heart of power struggle in the city” (Nolte, 2016:445). This informs the central research question and problem statement that the thesis seeks to address in one of South Africa largest metropolitan municipalities.

This thesis responds to the substantial arguments by Amina Nolte who argues that infrastructure makes space. Specifically, infrastructure does not merely appear in urban space, rather it is built and maintained through budgets. As Nolte (2016) argues that if, indeed, politics and the political are always inherent to infrastructure , my argument uses this as a point of departure. As a rationale for the thesis I argue that municipal infrastructures are a function of budgets and ultimately, these financial instruments make space. The thesis draws on substantial literature of infrastructure studies that infrastructure should be thought of as a political tool.

Apartheid town planning has vulgarised the town planning lexicon, in particular with respect to the word ‘township’, in this thesis I take the simple perspective of the word in its planning connotation to be meaning a “an area of land divided into erven [which] may include public spaces and roads indicated as such on a general plan” (SPLUMA, 2013:11).The critique offered in this thesis is drawn from a qualitative approach to method. Data are collected from purposeful sampling which targeted all depot managers in roads and stormwater depots that service the townships in Ekurhuleni.

The thesis links the spatial practice between colonial, apartheid, post-apartheid South Africa This linkage is important as it shows that spatial practice as offered by Lefebvre is space whereby “society as a whole continues in subjection to political practice – that is, to state power” (Lefebvre, 1991:8). Politics and the political are always inherent to infrastructure and that infrastructures are a function of budgets. the findings of this thesis are suggesting a triple nexus of sorts.

In this thesis I argue that considered individually, questions of space, budgets and infrastructure cannot be considered as belonging to a single academic field, rather the relationship between them requires an interdisciplinary approach across academic fields such as geography, finance, economics, and engineering respectively. The positioning of this thesis contributes to the knowledge in urban studies specifically as it relates to municipal infrastructure’s role in undoing the legacy of apartheid and its negative impact on South African spatial design and urban fabric.

Through the research for this PhD thesis, and as a reflection on my professional role as a senior official in the City of Ekurhuleni, I suggest that it is through a granular understanding of how operational budgets, such as repairs and maintenance budgets, can be used to promote of spatial justice in urban space.