Mmila (the Road) and the Great Stoep

Abstract

This paper explores and questions the promise of service delivery and infrastructural upgrades made in the City of Ekurhuleni in postapartheid South Africa, its immateriality in relation to concepts of modern African heritage. The paper is drawn from my PhD research which compares how the roads and stormwater Repairs, and Maintenance Budget of the City of Ekurhuleni has been resourced, organized, and distributed across the city's townships since 2000. It interrogates the budget process and its effectiveness as a political tool – rather than a technical tool – that pursues spatial justice and transformation of these previously underdeveloped townships. Section 153(a) of the South African Constitution delegates a municipality to ‘structure and manage its administration and budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community, and to promote the social and economic development of the community’.