Bad rural roads in South Africa aren’t just a technical problem – they block people’s rights

A street view near Mthatha, Eastern Cape. Picture: Gallo Images/Artur Widak/NurPhoto In many rural parts of South Africa, getting to a hospital, school or workplace depends on the condition of a gravel road. When that road collapses during rain or potholes make it impassable, the consequences are immediate: ambulances cannot reach patients, children miss school, workers lose income.

This is the reality for many communities in the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s poorest provinces. Here, four out of every five children live in households whose monthly income isn’t enough to meet their basic needs. In 2024, nearly 50% of children in the Eastern Cape lived in households without a single employed adult – the highest rate in the country.

A recent study in one Eastern Cape community documents that the roads are so degraded – from poorly maintained gravel to crumbling asphalt – that they actively cut residents off from healthcare, education and markets. The problem is often described simply as a failure of service delivery. But this explanation is incomplete.

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My research as a sociologist with a particular interest in the transport sector suggests that the decay of rural roads reflects something deeper. It is not a breakdown, but a continuation. A regime of inequality continues to shape infrastructure development long after the end of apartheid. The poor infrastructure is a direct legacy of apartheid’s spatial planning, which from 1948 to 1994 systematically underdeveloped rural “homelands” like the former Transkei (now in the Eastern Cape) to confine and control the Black majority.

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