I had spent months preparing to represent the University of Fort Hare at the 10th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in Prague. The excitement was building. On 27 June, I was set to present my paper, “Poor Road Infrastructure in Rural and Urban Communities: The Case of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa”.
My bags were packed, my presentation rehearsed, and my mind was buzzing with the thought of lively discussions. But as luck would have it, the world had other plans.
In the early hours of 24 June, I was at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. My Qatar Airways flight was supposed to take me from the cool South African morning, through Doha, and on to Europe. But then, a sense of unease spread through the departure lounge. Whispers turned into worried murmurs, and soon, the announcements confirmed our worst fears. A bombing in Doha had shut down the airport. It was a harsh reminder of how global events can disrupt our lives.
News came in bits and pieces – reports of significant damage and a complete shutdown. Later, from online sources like Reuters, the seriousness of the situation became clear: “Iran weighs retaliation against US strikes on nuclear sites” was the headline on 23 June, setting the stage for the next day’s events, which led to countless flight cancellations, including mine.
Read more: How my Qatar Airways flight was diverted as missiles flew over Doha
My travel plans, months in the making, disappeared in an instant, leaving me feeling helpless. With Europe suddenly out of reach, and every alternative route fully booked, I had only one option. Instead of going to Prague, I found myself on a tired flight back to East London, my academic dreams temporarily on hold.
Broken links
The irony was sharp, a difficult truth to accept. My paper speaks to the very essence of broken links. It argues that poor or nonexistent infrastructure – like roads full of potholes or bus routes that simply don’t exist – leads to deep isolation, reinforces inequality and silences the voices of those living on the fringes.
Now, in a cruel twist, geopolitical violence had suddenly cut off my own travel plans, turning me into a living example of the very disconnection that my research critiques.
Within hours of landing back in the Eastern Cape, still recovering from the travel ordeal, I got to work. I recorded a full presentation, carefully adding the slides and narration, making sure every point was clear and passionate. The file was then sent to the conference organisers with urgency, a desperate hope that my contribution could still spark discussion. It was a testament to the power of digital connection, a bright spot in a very dark situation.
In the recording, I started with the main question that guides all my research: “What does a road say about a state?” Roads are like political statements. Their very existence, or their sad state of disrepair, speaks volumes about whose movement truly matters, whose lives are considered less important, and whose wellbeing is ignored.
Based on extensive fieldwork in East London, Nqanqarhu (formerly Maclear), Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), the townships of Duncan Village and Joza, and remote villages in the Joe Gqabi District, I showed how infrastructure failure deepens what Rob Sullivan called “the geography of the everyday”. This concept refers to the daily patterns of movement, trade and care that truly show how citizenship works, or tragically, when it doesn’t.
The statistics paint a grim picture. According to the Eastern Cape Department of Transport (ECDoT), the province’s road network is a massive 40,601km long. Yet, only 9.8% – that’s 3,958km – is actually paved, predominantly with asphalt.
The vast majority, 90.2% or a huge 36,643km, consists of unpaved gravel roads. What’s more, an alarming 88.2% of this unpaved network, which is 24,578km, is in “Poor” or “Very Poor” condition. Even the paved roads, the lucky few, are generally rated as being in “Poor” overall condition.
A human rights violation
These are not just abstract numbers; they are real-life experiences. In the Joe Gqabi District, for example, small-scale farmers often lose up to 30% of their valuable produce because trucks battle these unforgiving roads, bruising fresh fruit and vegetables until they are worthless for sale.
Similarly, minibus taxi owners frequently avoid certain rural routes altogether because the constant repair costs to their vehicles outweigh any potential earnings. This leaves elderly residents with no choice but to trek kilometers on foot to the nearest clinic.
In Duncan Village, many students routinely miss morning lectures simply because flooded potholes make the road impassable, trapping them in their neighbourhoods. These aren’t isolated incidents; they show that infrastructure is not merely concrete and tar; it is, quite literally, an essential part of our constitutional rights – to health, to education and to work.
The South African Human Rights Commission has even declared the state of the Eastern Cape’s roads a human rights violation, specifically citing breaches of sections 27 (right to healthcare), 29 (right to education) and 22 (freedom of trade, occupation and profession, impacted by economic opportunity) of our Constitution.
Read more: Rural roads are lifelines – a call for change in the Eastern Cape
I then mapped the larger pattern, revealing historical injustices. The apartheid spatial planning system deliberately separated Black communities in townships and rural areas. After 1994, democratic South Africa promised fairness. However, infrastructure maintenance, particularly in previously disadvantaged areas, collapsed.
Today, the Eastern Cape’s vast road network shows this; meticulously repaired in middle-class suburbs, but deeply broken in Black townships, and virtually invisible in remote villages. The ECDoT estimates a huge R30.5-billion maintenance backlog, yet its annual budget for road repairs is a tiny R700-million. This lack of funding ensures that the legacy of broken infrastructure continues.
However, my paper wasn’t just about identifying the problem; it also aimed to find solutions.
First, I suggested regular, clear road-condition audits, directly linked to dedicated, performance-based grants. Second, I advocated for truly participatory budgeting at the municipal level, empowering residents to set priorities themselves.
Third, well-managed public-private partnerships could bring in much-needed funds for repairing key agricultural routes, boosting trade and economic growth. Fourth, and crucially, I highlighted the power of legal action. Framing ongoing neglect under sections 27, 29 and 22 of the Constitution could turn what is often dismissed as a mere service delivery issue into a legal violation of fundamental human rights, forcing the state to act.
Overlapping peripheries
Returning to the theme of the ECAS session – “Living African urban peripheries: social infrastructures and spatial connections” – I presented the Eastern Cape as a living example of overlapping peripheries.
Here, rural villages are peripheral to provincial capitals; townships are peripheral to city centres; and the province itself often finds itself peripheral to national investment priorities. In each of these layers of marginalisation, a worn, broken road represents the social infrastructure that either connects or, more often, widens the gap between people and opportunity.
The detailed analysis of Joza and Duncan Village clearly showed that, even in formally urban areas, residents experience what can only be called peri-urban exclusions: irregular waste removal, inconsistent street lighting and, most importantly, roads that collapse into dangerous trenches with every rainy season, trapping communities.
In contrast, in Makhanda’s tourist areas, crisp asphalt signals a decidedly different kind of citizenship, a privilege of access and mobility. The periphery, then, is not just a geographical location; it is deeply relational – a spectrum of connection or disconnection, clearly visible in the presence, or absence, of paved roads.
Read more: Across the Great Divide: Road quality and governance in the Eastern and Western Cape
Reflecting on the week’s turbulence from the familiar comfort of my study in East London, I realise that my aborted journey became a real-life example of my own research.
Geopolitics, in the form of a bombing in Doha linked to heightened tensions between Iran and the US, cut off a vital global route connecting Johannesburg, Doha and Prague. Yet, ironically, digital connectivity, the very technology that allows us to connect across vast distances, allowed my voice to travel the same distance that my body could not.
The incident thus highlights a dual, important lesson of our unstable era: the inherent fragility of physical travel in a world increasingly prone to disruption, and, at the same time, the incredible resilience of scholarly exchange when technology is used with urgency and purpose.
Therefore, the belief that the road to justice truly begins on the margins has only been strengthened by my forced detour from Prague to East London.
Whether we examine the forgotten village tracks that crisscross our rural landscapes or analyse the intricate web of international flight paths that connect our globalised world, we face the same ethical imperative: to build connections that do not break under pressure, to bring forth voices that have been silenced by distance and neglect. DM