What Replaces the State? Waste Governance Beyond Municipal Failure in Makana, South Africa

Technical Summary: "What Replaces the State? Waste Governance Beyond Municipal Failure in Makana, South Africa"

Problem Statement
In South Africa, local municipalities face escalating financial, infrastructural, and institutional strains, leading to intermittent and unreliable waste collection services. While existing scholarship often frames this deterioration as a binary state of "failure" or "absence," creating a gap between constitutional mandates and lived reality, this perspective risks obscuring the governance mechanisms that emerge in the void. In Makana Local Municipality (Eastern Cape), waste collection has shifted from a routine service to an uncertain event. The central problem addressed is not merely the breakdown of municipal services, but the question of what replaces the state: how is waste management reorganized, who assumes responsibility, and what are the consequences for inequality and governance when the state becomes intermittent rather than absent?

Methodology
The study employs a qualitative approach situated within Makana Local Municipality, a predominantly rural and small-town municipality experiencing sustained service disruptions. The analysis is based on 55 semi-structured interviews conducted between late 2023 and early 2025. The participant pool includes a diverse range of actors across the waste system:

• Municipal officials and waste workers.
• Private service providers.
• Informal waste workers (reclaimers).
• Community organizations and civic actors.
• Residents from urban, peri-urban, and rural areas.

Participants were selected via purposive and snowball sampling. Interviews, conducted in English and isiXhosa, explored roles within the waste system, experiences of service disruption, and the specific strategies used to manage, move, or redirect waste under conditions of unreliable municipal provision. Data were analyzed thematically, focusing on how responsibilities are assumed, negotiated, displaced, or bypassed, and how waste continues to circulate through fragmented arrangements.

Key Contributions and Theoretical Framework
The paper contributes to the literature on waste governance and infrastructure in the Global South by shifting the analytical lens from "service failure" to "governance reconfiguration."

• Beyond Binary Failure: The authors argue against viewing the state as either present or absent. Instead, they propose that municipal failure is a condition that reorganizes governance itself, resulting in a dispersed and unstable "assemblage."
• Assemblage Theory: Drawing on scholarship regarding infrastructure as socio-material formations (e.g., McFarlane, Simone), the paper conceptualizes waste management not as a coherent system but as a fragmented alignment of municipal actors, private providers, informal workers, and community initiatives.
• Redistribution of Burden: The study highlights that while waste continues to be managed, the labor, cost, and risks of provision are redistributed downward onto households, informal workers, and under-resourced communities, exacerbating existing inequalities.

Key Findings
The research identifies four primary dynamics characterizing waste governance in Makana:

1. Intermittent State Presence: Municipal services have not vanished but have become unpredictable and uneven. Collection is no longer a routine but an intermittent intervention. While the municipality retains formal constitutional responsibility, its practical capacity is compromised by aging infrastructure and financial constraints, leading to a perception of effective absence among residents and businesses.
2. Substitution and Self-Provision: In the absence of reliable municipal collection, a routine of substitution has emerged.
   • Businesses increasingly rely on private removal services or internal labor, often paying twice (for municipal services they do not receive and for private removal).
   • Households engage in improvised responses, including burning waste, dumping in open spaces, or transporting waste to informal sites.
   • Community groups and volunteers organize repetitive clean-ups, acting as a partial substitute for municipal functions.
   • Intermediary programs, such as the Social Employment Fund (SEF), provide temporary continuity but do not constitute a permanent solution.
3. Improvised Infrastructures: Waste continues to move through alternative pathways. These include the creation of de facto dumping grounds on road verges and open land, the burning of waste (where space permits), and the use of informal transport systems (wheelbarrows, donkey carts, informal collectors). These pathways are shaped by local density, available space, and mobility, linking collection failures to broader environmental and health risks.
4. Fragility and Uneven Geographies of Burden: The resulting system is not a stable equilibrium but a persistently unstable arrangement requiring continual improvisation and repetition.
   • Instability: Efforts to clean or clear waste are repeatedly undone because the underlying conditions of accumulation remain unchanged.
   • Inequality: The burden of management is unevenly distributed. Formal areas and businesses with resources can access private alternatives, while informal settlements and peri-urban areas face sustained disruptions with fewer alternatives. The costs (financial, temporal, physical, and environmental) are disproportionately absorbed by those least able to bear them.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that the decline of municipal waste services in Makana represents a reconfiguration of governance rather than a simple vacuum.

• Nature of Governance: Waste management persists through a "fragmented and unstable assemblage" of actors. This is not a temporary disruption awaiting recovery but the current condition of the system.
• Limitations of Fragmentation: The authors assert that the mere multiplication of actors does not produce a durable or equitable system. Without coordination, institutional support, and resource alignment, these arrangements remain fragile and dependent on the unpaid or under-supported labor of marginalized groups.
• Policy Implications: The study challenges narratives that frame community participation or informal labor solely as "resilience." Instead, it frames these as necessary responses to necessity that often obscure the displacement of state responsibility.
• Conclusion: The task for policy is not simply to restore a singular model of state-led provision but to engage with the fragmented arrangements already in place. The goal should be to build more durable and inclusive governance by supporting existing actors (informal workers, community initiatives) through meaningful integration and resource redistribution, rather than attempting to displace them or ignoring the reality of how waste is currently managed.