Infrastructural inequity in urban expansion: water, sanitation, and waste in the city of Polokwane's dormitory locations of Juju Valley and Mamahule Park

1 Introduction

The expansion of dormitory towns on the peripheries of South African cities remains a persistent yet profoundly problematic feature of post-apartheid urban development (Scheba et al., 2021). Despite constitutional guarantees and policy commitments to spatial transformation and equitable service delivery, the lived reality in these locations continues to be defined by infrastructural precarity and socio-economic marginalization (Adedeji, 2023). This enduring contradiction is not simply a failure of implementation but is rooted in historical spatial logics and contemporary governance dilemmas that are acutely visible in secondary cities undergoing rapid urbanization. The City of Polokwane, the administrative capital of Limpopo Province, serves as a critical exemplar of this dynamic. As Smith (2015) documents, the city of Polokwane's peri-urban interface has become a primary zone of uneven development, where new settlements are characterized by “significantly lower living standards” and acute “access to urban infrastructure is scarce and poorly developed” (Smith, 2015: p. ii–iii). In this context, urban growth manifests through contested settlements that test the limits of municipal planning and the promise of the right to the city.

This paper investigates the nexus of infrastructure, land, and politics in shaping two distinct yet concurrent forms of peripheral expansion in Polokwane: Juju Valley and Mamahule Park. Both settlements occupy privately owned land but have emerged through radically different socio-political processes. Juju Valley represents a case of politicized land occupation, facilitated and mobilized by the economic freedom fighters (EFF), with plots distributed freely to residents (Zuma, 2024). In stark contrast, Mamahule Park has developed as a formal, entrepreneurial venture by one family, who subdivided and sold stands on their property. This crucial divergence between a politically orchestrated, decommodified access to land and a market-led, commodified model provides a unique lens through which to examine how the governance of basic infrastructure is negotiated, contested, and often fails.

The academic discourse on South African urbanization has effectively charted the macro-dynamics of apartheid's spatial legacy and the challenges of service delivery (Turok et al., 2021; Johnston et al., 2023). Research focused on the City of Polokwane has elucidated planning complexities (Mokoele, 2023) and empirically identified intricate systems of agency encompassing governance, economic policy, and socio-cultural norms that perpetuate the city's socio-spatial divisions (Moffat et al., 2022; Smith, 2015). This paper builds on this recognition of multi-driver urban division by drilling down into a critical, tangible outcome on the governance of water, sanitation, and waste infrastructure.

This study, therefore, poses the central research question, how do the divergent origins and political economies of Juju Valley and Mamahule Park shape the governance of water, sanitation, and solid waste infrastructure, and what does this reveal about the prospects for infrastructural justice in the City of Polokwane's urban periphery? To answer this research question, the paper employs a qualitative comparative case study methodology, grounded in the analysis of policy documents, municipal reports, demographic data, and scholarly literature, including media reports that capture the political discourse surrounding these settlements.

Framed by postcolonial urbanism, the analysis moves beyond seeing infrastructure gaps as technical failures. Instead, it interprets them as manifestations of an enduring socio-spatial order and a fragmented governance system that struggles to respond coherently to differentiated urban growth. The findings demonstrate that the municipality's response is inherently bifurcated: in Juju Valley, it is reactive, characterized by crisis management and entangled in high-stakes political negotiation; in Mamahule Park, it is procedural yet strained, focused on regulating a private developer while grappling with the broader implications of densification without commensurate bulk infrastructure planning (Teller, 2021).

This paper argues that achieving sustainable urbanization in South Africa's secondary cities requires a fundamental reorientation toward infrastructural justice. This paradigm demands that planning proactively addresses the nexus of land and basic services, moving beyond reactive, politicized, or purely market-driven models to ensure that the essential networks for dignified urban life are equitably provided as the foundation of all spatial development. The discussion proceeds by outlining the theoretical framework, detailing the methodology and case contexts, and presenting a comparative analysis of the infrastructural governance in the two settlements, before concluding with recommendations for policy and praxis.

2 Theoretical framework

2.1.1 Legacy and continuity

Theorizing infrastructural (in)justice in the postcolonial periphery and analyzing the divergent infrastructural pathways of Juju Valley and Mamahule Park, this paper employs a dual theoretical framework. First being the postcolonial urbanism that provides the critical lens to understand infrastructure as a historical, political, and deeply contested terrain, moving beyond technical failure (Legacy, 2016; Castan Broto and Westman, 2019). This perspective insists on understanding present urban forms through the longue durée of historical spatial violence, tracing the line from apartheid's racially engineered service provision to today's geographically segregated infrastructure gaps (Turok et al., 2021; Scheba, 2023).

The second being, the historical analysis in the specific materialities of the contemporary African peri-urban condition, drawn from the conceptual framework of African urban peripheries developed by Meth et al. (2021). They argue that peripheries are defined not by a uniform condition of lack, but by a constellation of common characteristics that encompassess infrastructure deficits, service gaps and relatively cheap land as experienced alongside critical differential characteristics that produce starkly divergent lived realities. These differentials relook at municipal presence vs. effective service provisioning, opportunity vs. marginalization, and connectedness vs. isolation. The result gives a clear analytical vocabulary that lets to the understanding of how the shared experience of living on the edge of the City of Polokwane leads to very different futures for infrastructure in places like Juju Valley, which is an informal settlement with a lot of politics, and Mamahule Park, which is a market-led development.

This integrated theoretical framework, which connects the profound historical analysis of postcolonial urbanism with the detailed typology of peri-urban differentiation, enables the understanding of infrastructure deficiencies as an intricate phenomenon. Thus, the frameworks are simultaneously legacies of the longue durée of spatial injustice and immediate outcomes of the contemporary, differentiated logics that govern urban expansion. This politicized view of infrastructure is empirically substantiated by studies of Polokwane itself. Research by Moffat et al. (2022) identifies governance processes, policies, and economic agencies as primary drivers in the (re)production of the city's divided spatial form. The analysis confirms that infrastructural outcomes are seldom neutral but are shaped by these intersecting systems of agency, which allocate resources and risk in ways that perpetuate historical spatial injustices.

By applying this dual framework, the paper positions the infrastructural governance of water, sanitation, and waste not as a secondary planning issue, but as a primary site where historical power relations, contemporary political agency, and differentiated peri-urban logics converge to shape the possibilities for urban citizenship and justice.

2.1.2 Postcolonial urbanism

The lens of legacy and continuity insists that present urban forms cannot be divorced from their historical production. Postcolonial urbanism demands an understanding of the longue durée of spatial injustice. In South Africa, this means drawing a direct line from the apartheid state's racially engineered geography, which systematically gave white urban areas better, more connected infrastructure while intentionally neglecting Black townships and rural homelands, to the current situation of geographically segregated service gaps (Turok et al., 2021; Scheba, 2023). The peripheries of cities like the city of Polokwane are not neutral places for growth; they are written with this historical logic as Smith (2015) illustrates that post-apartheid peri-urban expansion in the City of Polokwane has functioned as a “temporary stabilization” (p. 2) of this enduring unevenness, where new growth corridors reproduce rather than rectify historical trends of infrastructural deprivation and socio-economic marginalization. New expansions, whether informal or formal, often inherit and reproduce the infrastructural marginalization of the apartheid-era “dormitory” township, trapping residents in a geography of enduring disadvantage (Philip, 2014).

2.1.3 Infrastructure as political

Based on this historical understanding, the framework sees infrastructure as political. According to Castan Broto and Westman (2019), infrastructure is not just a neutral, technical result of planning; it is a social and material process that actively gives out resources, recognition, and risk. The presence or absence of piped water, sanitation networks, and formal waste collection is a physical manifestation of political priorities and power relations (Legacy, 2016). Consequently, decisions or non-decisions regarding where to lay pipes or schedule waste collection trucks are fundamentally acts of governance that determine whose life is valued and whose environment is rendered precarious. This politicized view of infrastructure allows the researcher to interpret the stark contrast between Juju Valley and Mamahule Park not as an accident of planning, but as the outcome of different political and economic calculations embedded in their origins as reflected in Smith's (2015) observation that local development in the City of Polokwane is driven more by “macro-economic policies aimed toward capitalist growth rather than community development” (p. ii).

2.1.4 Governance and agency

This theoretical framework underscores everyday governance and agency. Thus, postcolonial urbanism recognizes the importance of structural legacy and top-down power, but it also looks at how urban life is contested and negotiated. Furthermore, the theoretical framework acknowledges the agency of residents, who are not mere passive recipients of the municipal provisioning (in)action but proactive agents who navigate, adapt to, and advocate for infrastructure. In informal settlements like Juju Valley, this agency is often expressed through direct engagement, protest, or political mobilization to claim services, thereby forcing the municipality into a reactive mode of governance. This agency is exercised within a context of constrained choices, a reality underscored by Smith's (2015) finding of “deproletarianization” in the City of Polokwane's periphery, where limited access to formal wage labor forces households into complex, monetized livelihood strategies that heighten their dependence on, and vulnerability to, inadequate urban services. This lens is important for understanding how gaps in infrastructure become places where people fight over the most basic parts of city life, and how citizenship is performed and negotiated through these fights.

This study situates itself within South African urban scholarship, directly addressing pivotal discussions regarding the “crisis of local government,” disjointed urban governance, and the recurrent emergence of service delivery protests. This paper provides a detailed, infrastructure-driven analysis to examine the mechanisms of these well-documented broader crises. Utilizing the aforementioned conceptual framework in a comparative case study within a secondary city elucidates the tangible manifestations of macro-level political and historical forces in the quotidian struggle for water, sanitation, and waste services. This paper builds on Smith's (2015) conclusion that the City of Polokwane is “certainly not in a post-poverty era” (p. ii) by arguing that its periphery is also not “post-infrastructural.” It ultimately argues that achieving “infrastructural justice,” a state in which the delivery of fundamental networked services is fair, respectful, and independent of the political economy of land access, constitutes the unresolved essence of spatial transformation in post-apartheid South Africa.

3 Methodology and case typology: situating the peri-urban settlements

This paper employs a qualitative comparative case study methodology, grounded in the analysis of policy documents, municipal reports, demographic data, and scholarly literature. Primary data was collected through environmental scanning, which involved systematic observation of physical site conditions, service infrastructure, and built form in both settlements. This observational method documented on-the-ground material realities of water and sanitation provision that often remain absent from official municipal records. No interviews or surveys with human subjects were conducted. To clearly situate the two cases within the spectrum of African urban expansion, the study utilized the typology of peri-urban characteristics developed by Meth et al. (2021). As shown in Table 1, this framework elucidates how Juju Valley and Mamahule Park, while sharing common peri-urban traits, are fundamentally differentiated by the political, economic, and governance logics that shape their development and their residents' access to essential services.

Table 1. A typology of peri-urban settlements in Polokwane (adapted from Meth et al., 2021).

Source: Author.

This manuscript builds upon but is distinct from Smith (2015). While Smith's doctoral work provided foundational context on uneven development in the City of Polokwane's peri-urban interface, this study contributes original analysis through: specific focus on water and sanitation infrastructure governance; comparative analysis of the two settlements' divergent political economies; incorporation of new primary data from environmental scanning conducted in 2024–2025; and integration of recent policy developments and legal cases (Mamahule Communal Property Association et al., 2017) and municipal updates (Machaka, 2025). All new datasets generated specifically for this case study are documented through the observational records cited herein. Figure 1 was improved and finalized using Artificial Intelligence (Image Generator from Chat GPT) from the manual drawings done by the author.

This typological analysis (Table 1) elucidates that the observed “infrastructural injustice” is not a universal result but rather a product of specific combinations of these differential characteristics. The building of Mamahule Park, in particular, takes place in an area that has been disputed in the past and is still legally disputed (Mamahule Communal Property Association et al., 2017). This case, in which two parties claim the same piece of restored land, shows that modern market-driven developments like Mamahule Park are not built on a blank slate, but on a border where post-apartheid land restitution issues are still being talked about. This legal history makes it much harder to understand land tenure, legitimacy, and community dynamics beyond the family's private deals. The subsequent analysis will investigate how these divergent typologies, specifically the dichotomy of municipal presence and effective service provisioning, directly influence the governance and lived experiences of water, sanitation, and waste management in each settlement.

4 Key themes of infrastructure and the recomposed dormitory periphery

4.1 The persistent paradigm of the dormitory location

The expansion of dormitory towns on the peripheries of South African cities remains a persistent yet profoundly problematic feature of post-apartheid urban development (Scheba et al., 2021). The phenomenon of peri-urban expansion is not limited to major metropolitan areas or secondary cities alone. It equally encompasses small towns, rural service centers, and settlements along transportation corridors experiencing growth pressures from urbanization, migration, and economic change. This broader definition is essential for understanding the full spectrum of peri-urban dynamics across South Africa's settlement hierarchy. The dormitory “township,” historically conceived for labor control and social segregation during apartheid spatial planning, is characterized by its isolated location and systematically deficient infrastructure, a legacy of apartheid that continues to exert influence, with numerous analyses indicating minimal change or ongoing segregation (Sies, 1997; Lemon et al., 2021; Breetzke, 2018). This form has not been dismantled in the democratic era; rather, it continues to be reconfigured, as evidenced by housing projects that still reinforce the dormitory function of these areas. The term “township,” a fundamental spatial concept of apartheid, remains in use today (Theron et al., 2022; Lemon et al., 2021). Its rationale persists through the intersection of housing market failures, state delivery systems like the RDP program, and political land activism, culminating in a new generation of settlements that inherit the legacy of infrastructural marginalization (Turok et al., 2021; Johnston et al., 2023). As a result, these areas are still prime examples of uneven development, where high commuting costs, service delivery problems, and a lack of economic growth keep deep socio-economic gaps alive (Adedeji, 2023).

4.2 The genealogy of a dormitory periphery and Polokwane as a case study

There is a big gap in understanding how the specific political economy of land access shapes the governance of basic services in the larger dormitory setting (Peberdy et al., 2017). Thus, the dormitory settlements under study must be understood as contemporary extensions of a deeply entrenched spatial history (Theron et al., 2022). Polokwane's urban form has long been shaped by two original, planned dormitory locations namely, Seshego which was established north of the city as a segregated township for black labor under apartheid (Ntema and Venter, 2016; Heffernan, 2017), it remains a major residential zone characterized by inherited infrastructure backlogs and high-density living. The second being, Mankweng which was developed near the University of Limpopo, south-east of the city, it evolved as a peri-urban hub blending student populations, university staff, and surrounding communities, yet it too faces significant service delivery challenges (Heffernan, 2017), such as the demand for subsidized housing in the entire municipal area due to population growth and immigration of the high inward migration from the surrounding municipalities outside of the district and this makes the housing backlog a moving target (CDM, 2019; Capricorn District Municipality, 2020).

Juju Valley and Mamahule Park are the newest settlements to be built on top of these original cores. Juju Valley is a direct, informal extension of Seshego that came about because people needed more housing and the land was available. On the other hand, Mamahule Park is a formal, market-driven extension toward Mankweng that takes advantage of the need for affordable, well-located stands closer to the city center. The cases are not separate events; they are all connected to the historical dormitory model. This shows how the need for urban housing continues to push the periphery outward, creating and changing patterns of marginalization.

Table 2 situates the empirical trends within persistent processes of uneven development, deproletarianization, and post-apartheid continuity. Table 1 categorizes peri-urban settlements based on governance, infrastructure, and socio-economic disparities, while the tables together show that the current growth of peri-urban areas in Polokwane is not a break in space, but a change in the way historically marginalized urban forms are arranged.

Table 2. Thematic analysis of Polokwane's peri-urban expansion.

Source: (Smith, 2015 and Meth et al., 2021).

5 Analysis and discussion

5.1 Peri-urbanization as recompositing rather than rupture

This research examined the peri-urban expansion of Polokwane not merely as a contemporary geographical phenomenon arising from post-apartheid urbanization, but as a historically entrenched process shaped by uneven development, worker exclusion, and fragmented governance. An examination of the processes in Tables 1, 2 delineates a typology of peri-urban communities based on governance structures, infrastructural quality, and financial resources. Table 2 illustrates how these trends align with enduring structural continuities that connect dormitory townships from the apartheid period to contemporary urban expansions. The comprehensive study indicates that peri-urbanization in Polokwane signifies the restructuring of the apartheid system rather than its disintegration.

5.2 Typology and historical process

Table 1 shows that Juju Valley and Mamahule Park are both on the edge of the city, but they were established using different rules for governance and accumulation. Juju Valley is defined by a limited municipal presence characterized by reactive crisis management rather than systematic service provision, severe infrastructure deprivation, and decommodified land access facilitated by occupation and political takeover. Security of tenure in Juju Valley remains profoundly precarious. Residents occupy land through political mobilization without formal legal recognition, creating chronic uncertainty that inhibits household investment in improved sanitation infrastructure and perpetuates dependency on party-mediated services. This tenure insecurity fundamentally shapes residents' relationship to the municipality and their capacity to advocate for long-term infrastructural integration.

By contrast, Mamahule Park reflects bureaucratic state presence, with some land hijacking character by some family claiming to be the custodians of the land who then commodified access to the land through plots or yards, and anticipated service provision through formal planning channels. However, security of tenure in Mamahule Park is complicated by the unresolved legal status of the underlying land claims (Mamahule Communal Property Association et al., 2017). While residents hold purchase agreements with the contesting ancestral rights family, the legitimacy of that family's title remains contested, creating potential future tenure vulnerability despite the appearance of formal private ownership. This legal uncertainty affects both municipal willingness to invest in bulk infrastructure and residents' long-term security. These disparities complicate the standardization of peri-urban poverty reports by illustrating the diverse trajectories within the periphery.

However, Table 2 demonstrates that these differentiated outcomes are not historically disconnected in that they represent the reworking of structural conditions that shaped apartheid-era dormitory settlements such as Seshego and Mankweng which were as a result of a continuous separate development policies as propagated by the group areas Act (Act 41 of 1950). The Act encouraged uneven development, which was characterized by chronic under-investment, poor services, and spatial marginalization that still affects both established and new peripheral areas. Table 2 provides the historical backdrop clarifying the differences in Wealth as well as Poverty and Opportunity for the Marginalization as highlighted in Table 1, demonstrating that Peri-urban typologies should be understood not just as spatial classifications but also as historically rooted outcomes of political and economic activities.

5.3 Deproletarianization and the constraints of urban proximity

A key process linking both tables is proletarianization, which shapes livelihoods across the urban periphery. As shown in Table 2, Seshego and Mankweng historically functioned as labor reserves for Polokwane's urban core. While apartheid spatial planning enforced this relationship, post-apartheid labor markets have failed to absorb expanding populations, resulting in persistent unemployment and informalization.

Table 1 illustrates the spatial manifestation of this structural problem in modern additions. In Juju Valley, deproletarianization is evident by persistent poverty among many residents, subsistence-based livelihoods for a significant portion of the population and dependence on unstable income techniques, despite close proximity to the city. However, it is important to note that not all Juju Valley residents experience uniform poverty; socio-economic diversity exists within the settlement, including some households with regular formal employment who chose the location for its proximity to the city despite its infrastructural deficits. In Mamahule Park, identical labor constraints yield a divergent response, since home ownership is perceived as an aspirational and speculative approach for future security rather than a manifestation of current economic integration. The Mamahule Park population includes a mix of lower- to middle-income households, some of whom have invested significant capital in building substantial homes, challenging any simplistic characterization of all peripheral residents as uniformly poor. Together, the tables illustrate that proximity to the city does not equate to socio-economic inclusion, reinforcing critiques of urban integration narratives in African cities (Kajiita and Kang'ethe, 2024).

5.4 Infrastructure scarcity and fragmented governance

Infrastructure becomes the essential, concrete area where the theoretical framework of the periphery and the historical dynamics of urban growth intersect. Table 1 shows that service deficits are a defining but differently experienced condition of peri-urban settlements. This scarcity results from the inherited backlogs of apartheid's deliberate under-investment, which post-1994 governance has struggled to eliminate. Moreover, the backlog generated by distinct development stemming from macroeconomic and geographical policies has prioritized growth above equitable development (Smith, 2015; Moffat et al., 2022). The stark contrast between Juju Valley's absence of services and Mamahule Park's persistent delays in delivering them indicates a malfunctioning governance structure. This method alternates between addressing crises in informal settlements and collaborating with private developers in a bureaucratic manner to convert appropriated land into official expansions. This analysis shows that neither the complete absence of municipal service delivery nor the presence of procedural governance can ensure the timely and fair infrastructure needed for long-term urban growth. This governance failure aligns with comprehensive evaluations of South Africa's urban challenges, where enduring apartheid legacies and inadequate inclusive participation of urban residents, especially in informal settlements, are identified as major impediments to sustainability (Adedeji, 2023). Kajiita and Kang'ethe (2024) contend that overcoming this stalemate requires a fundamental strategic transformation rather than resisting informality and market dynamics, one must engage with these realities to proactively devise strategies and allocate resources for infrastructure as the foundational element of inclusive urban citizenship. The South African Cities Network report (2022) corroborates this assertion, indicating that the government cannot resolve infrastructure issues independently due to their complexity and deep-seated nature. Innovative and inclusive paradigms of thought are essential for identifying enduring and lasting solutions.

5.5 Policy failure, implementation gaps, and the peripheral reproduction

The analysis of Juju Valley and Mamahule Park reveals a core dysfunction in post-apartheid urban governance due to a persistent gap between progressive policy formulation and effective, equitable implementation. As Kajiita and Kang'ethe (2024) argue, while South Africa has embarked on numerous policy programs aimed at urban reform, “the main challenge has been the effective implementation of these policies” (p. 10). This implementation failure is not a passive shortfall but an active driver in reproducing the peripheral inequality outlined in Tables 1, 2.

The divergent trajectories of the two settlements are symptomatic of this broader systemic flaw. Thus, in Juju Valley, policy failure manifests as a complete breakdown of formal planning and proactive engagement. The municipality's limited presence and subsequent crisis-driven governance represent a failure to implement “pro-people policies premised on constitutional rights” that support communities organizing for “access to well-located land for settlement” (Kajiita and Kang'ethe, 2024, p. 10). Rather than directing this political agency toward a systematic, inclusive enhancement process, policy stagnation has relegated the settlement to an unstable informality.

In Mamahule Park, policy failure is evident in the municipality's incapacity to prevent nor manage a significant familial land invasion accompanied by unlawful subdivision of land into plots or stands. The development was not officially sanctioned but commenced via an extra-legal seizure by the family, who asserted ancestral claims to the site. The ensuing result of delayed bulk infrastructure and unmet service commitments underscores a significant governance deficiency seen by the municipality intervening too late to avert the established reality of settlement. The municipality is now challenged to regulate and adapt services within a complex, pre-existing framework of capital-intensive informality. “This reflects a failure to implement the kind of “socially friendly policies” and proactive land management that could either prevent such invasions or channel the illegal occupation swiftly into legal, serviced frameworks (Kajiita and Kang'ethe, 2024, p. 10).”

The tenure security dimension is particularly salient in Mamahule Park. The unresolved legal status of the land, stemming from the broader restitution claim (Mamahule Communal Property Association et al., 2017), creates a fundamental barrier to municipal investment in bulk infrastructure. Municipal officials reasonably question whether installing expensive networked services on land whose ownership remains contested represents prudent use of public funds. This legal uncertainty, combined with the irregular subdivision process, perpetuates a cycle where residents hold de facto occupation rights but lack the de jure security that would trigger formal service delivery commitments.

Both outcomes critically converge on the same effect, showing the results of a perpetual peripheral inequality in issues of linear assumptions, whether through formalization or market participation that do not automatically resolve, nor guarantee enhanced urban inclusion. The evidence suggests that without a fundamental reorientation of implementation toward justice and equity, both formal and informal pathways can perpetuate marginalization.

Moving beyond this impasse requires heeding the call to “accelerate policy reforms” with a focus on execution (Kajiita and Kang'ethe, 2024, p. 9). This means moving from generic housing policy to “revamping housing strategies to prioritize smaller-scale projects that can be built in city sub-centers, and on providing well-connected, serviced sites for construction” (p. 10). For areas like Juju Valley, this implies a shift from crisis management to proactive, participatory in situ upgrading. For developments like Mamahule Park, it necessitates robust mechanisms to hold private capital accountable for timely, equitable infrastructure delivery as a non-negotiable condition of development approval. Ultimately, the case of Polokwane underscores that policy success must be measured not by plans written, but by equitable outcomes delivered on the urban periphery.

This challenge is further complicated by the legacy of national land reform policy. Legal contests over the legitimacy and ownership of land, as exemplified by the Mamahule Communal Property Association et al. (2017), created a backdrop of uncertainty that can paralyze coherent municipal planning. Thus, when the fundamental question of who has a rightful claim to the land is contested at a national judicial level, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for local municipalities to implement proactive, integrated infrastructure planning. Furthermore, this policy-legal nexus exacerbates the tendency toward crisis management in informal settlements and weak regulatory oversight in formal developments, as the municipality navigates between historical justice, legal rulings, and contemporary urban demand.

The stalled formalization of Mamahule Park must be understood in relation to specific targets within the City of Polokwane's Integrated Development Plan (IDP). The 2019/2020 IDP identified the need to “facilitate the provision of bulk infrastructure for new residential developments” and to “engage with land owners to secure servitudes for service delivery.” The Mayor's 2025 admission that the municipality awaits servitudes from the Department of Rural Development (Machaka, 2025) reveals a 5-year gap between IDP commitment and implementation. Similarly, the IDP's objective to “formalize informal settlements through participatory planning” remains unmet in Juju Valley, where ongoing “discussions” have yet to produce the report to council promised within the 2024/2025 financial year. This explicit linkage between stalled processes and unmet IDP targets substantiates the critique of implementation failure as a systemic governance challenge rather than isolated administrative delay.

A January 2025 news report provides a clear snapshot of this negotiated governance in practice regarding Mamahule Park (Machaka, 2025), wherein the Executive Mayor of the City of Polokwane stated that formalization was stalled, awaiting “servitudes” from the Department of Rural Development, highlighting the constraints of procedural municipal presence where municipal action is dependent on resolutions from other state entities (Times Live, 2024). For Juju Valley, the municipality reported “meetings with the landowners” and discussions to make land available for commercial activities. This reveals an attempt to engage with the politicized context characteristic of such settlements, shifting from crisis management to a negotiation framework that seeks to channel informality toward economic development.

This real-time account perfectly illustrates the differentiated, often fragmented, state response to the distinct peri-urban typologies. The gap between policy intent and on-the-ground implementation is starkly visible in these contemporary municipal engagements. Despite policies aimed at integrated urban development, the Executive Mayor's 2025 update reveals a reality of stalled processes (Machaka, 2025). The executive Mayor of the City of Polokwane local municipality stating that the municipality has “not been able to” provide services in Mamahule since 2019 due to pending inter-governmental servitudes is a textbook example of implementation failure, where bureaucratic hurdles between departments directly perpetuate infrastructural scarcity. Similarly, the ongoing “discussions” and awaited “report to council” for Juju Valley underscore how procedural delays maintain a state of informality and service deficit.

5.6 Continuity in the post-apartheid city enduring legacies and new dynamics

The combined analysis of the peri-urban typology (Table 1) and its underlying drivers (Table 2) powerfully affirms a central thesis of postcolonial urbanism: the post-apartheid city is characterized by continuity through transformation. The racial planning laws of the past have been replaced, yet the socio-spatial order they engineered persists. As Smith (2015) notes, South Africa is “certainly not in a post-poverty era” (p. ii). This condition is actively reproduced in new peripheries like Juju Valley and Mamahule Park, not by apartheid decree, but through the interaction of contemporary market forces, political contestation, and policy failures within an enduring structure of inequality.

This continuity is not a passive historical remnant but is actively propelled by unresolved socio-economic forces. Kajiita and Kang'ethe (2024) recognize “unresolved apartheid legacies” as a significant barrier to sustainable urban development, maintaining “spatial injustice” and “disparities in income and access to services” (p. 7–8) in the City of Polokwane, these legacies are the bedrock upon which new developments falter. The infrastructural scarcity in Juju Valley and the service delays in Mamahule Park are not accidental but are direct outcomes of systems still shaped by these “spatial challenges” inherited from the past. Furthermore, the informality that defines Juju Valley and colors the edges of formal projects is, as Kajiita and Kang'ethe argue, often “treated like a crime” rather than engaged as a logical response to economic exclusion and a “lack of adequate infrastructure” (2024, p. 7). This approach reinforces marginalization rather than resolving it, ensuring the periphery remains a zone of informality and precariousness.

The continuity is further mediated by new political and economic agencies. The longue durée of spatial injustice now operates through contemporary mechanisms such as the market logic that prioritizes profit over equitable service provision in Mamahule Park, and the party-political mobilization that organizes land access but cannot guarantee services in Juju Valley. The outcome, however, converges as the production of differentially marginalized peripheries. This analysis moves beyond descriptive categorization to reveal the political economy of peri-urban reproduction. It illustrates that the “new urban forms” of the democratic era, whether market-driven subdivisions or politicized land occupations, do not inherently deconstruct established geographies of power. Instead, they can become new vessels for old patterns of exclusion, unless explicitly countered by what Kajiita and Kang'ethe (2024) term “pro-people policies premised on constitutional rights” (p. 10) and a fundamental shift toward working with informality and inclusivity.

Thus, the City of Polokwane's expanding periphery exemplifies a broader African urban condition that contributes to critical debates by showing that democratic transition and market liberalization are insufficient to produce spatial justice. Furthermore, true urban transformation requires confronting the deep socio-economic legacies that continue to structure opportunity and explicitly dismantling the mechanisms in policy, market practice, or governance that reproduce the peripheral city as a space of enduring inequality. This analysis, that reveals the mechanisms of continuity and exclusion, provides a clear foundation for rethinking policy and practice. “The following recommendations propose targeted pathways to disrupt this cycle and advance infrastructural justice in Polokwane's urban periphery.”

6 Recommendations

As a pathway to Infrastructural Justice in the Peri-Urban Interface, The analysis of Juju Valley and Mamahule Park demonstrates that overcoming peripheral infrastructural inequity requires moving beyond reactive, uniform policy. The following recommendations offer a differentiated, justice-oriented framework for urban governance, directly responding to the distinct political economies and governance failures identified in the study.

It is advised that in the politicized informal settlements (Juju Valley typology), the politicized absence of the state be transformed into organized co-governance. The municipality must create official, transparent collaborations with organized settlement committees to collaboratively formulate and execute upgrading of informal settlements program (UISP). This diverts political agency from continuous protest toward a participatory planning process, ensuring tenure and planning for gradual, in situ service implementation as a matter of entitlement, rather than political favoritism.

Lastly, for the disputed market-driven expansions of the Mamahule Park Typology, there is a pressing necessity to enhance governmental regulatory oversight through the enforcement of contractual obligations. Consequently, municipal planning regulations must be amended to require the concurrent provision of bulk water, sanitation, and waste infrastructure as a mandatory, legally binding condition for development permission. The municipality must actively facilitate inter-governmental coordination to obtain essential servitudes, so averting service delays from evolving into persistent deficits.

6.1 Integrate land tenure resolution with spatial planning

Investment in infrastructure within a context of disputed ownership is fundamentally unstable. Planning must confront the fundamental issue of land to facilitate sustained service provision by accelerating land regularization, thus Municipalities must work collaboratively with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform to fast-track the resolution of overlapping land claims, such as those exemplified by the Mamahule Communal Property Association et al. (2017). Infrastructure planning and budgets should be strategically aligned to support and incentivize sustainable settlement outcomes, transforming legal resolution into tangible urban integration. Secondly there is a need to pilot innovative tenure models that will help combat speculative informality and ensure long-term equity, provide support to community land trusts or limited-equity housing cooperatives on well-located peripheral land. These models can decommodify land, ensure perpetual affordability, and create a stable community partner for the municipality to collaborate with on service provision.

Any pathway to infrastructural justice must place security of tenure at its center. For Juju Valley, this requires moving beyond de facto occupation rights to formal tenure recognition through mechanisms such as the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Program (UISP), which provides a legal framework for in situ upgrading and title registration. For Mamahule Park, tenure security demands resolution of the underlying restitution claim, potentially through negotiated settlements that recognize both the Mamahule Communal Property Association's historical claim and the legitimate expectations of current residents who purchased plots in good faith. Without addressing these foundational tenure questions, infrastructure investment remains politically fraught and legally vulnerable.

6.2 Institutionalize pro-poor infrastructure investment and delivery

Achieving the metropolitan vision of “socio-economic growth and quality services” (Machaka, 2025) requires embedding equity into the core mechanics of municipal finance and operations.

6.2.1 Advocate for equity-based infrastructure grants

National budgetary frameworks, like the Urban Settlements Development Grant, ought to integrate poverty density and informality indexes into their allocation calculations. This will allocate funding to towns such as the city of Polokwane according to the magnitude of need, enabling them to rectify historical deficiencies while striving for strategic development.

6.2.2 Mandate integrated, human-scale development

Reject the perpetuation of the continued extensive, single-purpose dormitory developments. Thus, spatial development frameworks must require small-scale, mixed-use “development pods” that combine cheap housing with essential commercial areas, social amenities, and green infrastructure inside established urban corridors. This fosters local economic engagement, alleviates travel burdens, and cultivates cohesive communities.

6.2.3 Formalize and integrate the informal service sector

In accordance with the necessity to engage with informality (Kajiita and Kang'ethe, 2024), municipalities ought to establish programs to license, train, and incorporate informal service providers, including water resellers, sanitation maintenance personnel, and trash reclaimers, into the formal service delivery framework. This will enhance municipal scope, augments service dependability, and establishes dignified employment opportunities, directly confronting the circumstances of deproletarianization.

Figure 1 combines the article's comparative analysis into a framework for justice-oriented governance for delivering infrastructure in peri-urban areas. Based on the peri-urban typology in Table 1, it makes a distinction between politicized informal settlements (Juju Valley) and contested market-led expansions (Mamahule Park). This shows how different political economies lead to different infrastructure outcomes. Based on the structural continuities shown in Table 2, such as the state's persistent absence, fragmented regulation, and unresolved land tenure, the framework proposes three interconnected pathways. First, it suggests turning politicized state absence into structured co-governance by improving informal settlements through participatory upgrading, tenure security, and gradual in situ service provision. Second, it wants a stronger regulatory state that makes sure that infrastructure obligations are met and that governments work together on market-led developments in less populated areas. Third, it makes pro-poor infrastructure delivery a permanent part of the system by linking land tenure resolution with spatial planning, pushing for fair fiscal allocations, human-scale mixed-use development, and the formal inclusion of informal service providers. The framework redefines infrastructure as a governance process intertwined with power dynamics and spatial disparities, presenting context-specific routes to infrastructural justice in peri-urban South African cities.

7 Conclusion

The global imperative for sustainable urban development, championed in frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda, faces its most profound test in the peripheries of rapidly urbanizing cities like the City of Polokwane. This study has demonstrated that the expansion of dormitory settlements such as Juju Valley and Mamahule Park is not merely a logistical challenge of housing provision but a critical site where historical legacies, contemporary governance, and socio-economic forces converge to produce and reproduce urban inequality.

The analysis reveals that infrastructural inequity on the City of Polokwane's periphery is a direct manifestation of the differential characteristics of African urban peripheries (Meth et al., 2021). The acute infrastructural precarity in Juju Valley is the product of limited municipal presence and marginalization, where the right to basic services becomes a volatile currency of political contestation. In stark contrast, the delayed and strained service delivery in Mamahule Park stems from a regulatory municipal presence that is overmatched by the speculative logic of market-led development. This split governance, mirroring broader planning failures where policy has favored capitalist growth over community development (Smith, 2015), entrenches the very spatial inequalities post-apartheid policy seeks to dismantle. Consequently, the livelihood practices in these regions, marked by deproletarianization and dependence on precarious informal employment (Smith, 2015), are a direct consequence of systemic neglect, perpetuating cycles of poverty and marginalization.

Therefore, achieving infrastructural justice in the City of Polokwane and similar secondary cities requires a decisive break from current approaches. These demands moving beyond a one-size-fits-all urban policy to embrace interventions specifically tailored to distinct peri-urban typologies. For settlements like Juju Valley, justice requires transforming limited municipal presence into secure, participatory partnerships that recognize informal communities as legitimate stakeholders and channel political agency into structured, in situ upgrading. For market-led expansions like Mamahule Park, it necessitates strengthening municipal capacity to robustly mandate, finance, and coordinate equitable infrastructure as a non-negotiable precondition for development.

These focused interventions must be integrated into the comprehensive, multi-sectoral strategies delineated in the literature, which encompass engagement with informal sectors, expediting pro-poor policy reforms, and investing in both rural communities and urban social infrastructure (Kajiita and Kang'ethe, 2024; South African Cities Network, 2022). The goal must be to transition from a model of continuity through transformation wherein new forms perpetuate old inequalities to one of transformation through justice, where-in urban expansion becomes a vehicle for spatial redress, economic inclusion, and resilient, sustainable communities. The vision of a “metropolitan municipality” characterized by “socio-economic growth” and “quality services” will remain unrealized if these distinct pathways cannot be decisively resolved. The future of South Africa's cities depends not on the speed of their growth, but on the equity of their foundations.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Khululekani Ntakana, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Reviewed by: Siyabulela Christopher Fobosi, University of Fort Hare, South Africa

Emaculate Ingwani, University of Venda, South Africa