- Title
- Public goods and social resistance: A study of the perceptions of risk and vulnerability in the n2 toll road project in the wild coast of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
- Creator
- Mambiravana, Tafadzwa https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7543-2989
- Subject
- Infrastructure (Economics)
- Subject
- Roads -- South Africa
- Date
- 2022-08
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/23910
- Identifier
- vital:61293
- Description
- The construction of the N2 Toll Road in the Wild Coast has been lauded for its ‘developmental agenda’, as the government envisages, this 550 km road project linking Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal provinces will act as a game changer to the socio-economic status of the region in a manner beneficial to local people and the nation in general. However, the road project has equally been criticised by several local communities and environmental advocacy groups who suspect the road is associated with controversial titanium mining and its anticipated socio-ecological disasters in the region. Drawing from this conundrum, this study explores intersections of the diverse perceptions of stakeholders on infrastructural provisioning for development purposes in a historically deprived area in South Africa. Using a qualitative research approach in the form of face-to-face interviews with the participants, focus group discussions, secondary data review and observations, the study found that the diverse perceptions of risk and vulnerability have divided the stakeholders into those who support and those who oppose the road project. Most importantly, the study has also found that although there is deep-seated resentment towards the road project among certain grassroots groups, the general view shared among the study communities is nuanced. In other words, there is no ‘hardline collective opposition’ against the road project among local communities. Drawing from these findings, the study recommends that land audit need to be conducted prior to the commencement of infrastructure projects in order to highlight possible tenure blockages. In addition, the study recommends that it is critical for developers and policy makers to recognize the significance of cultural spaces and sacred places for community cultural health. These factors are critical to weigh against the proposed infrastructure developments as they sometimes outweigh the benefits. The study was anchored on the cultural theory of risk perception, which helped to explore the complex interactions between different actors on infrastructural development and environmental policy discourse.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2022
- Format
- computer
- Format
- online resource
- Format
- application/pdf
- Format
- 1 online resource (282 leaves)
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
- Rights
- All Rights Reserved
- Rights
- Open Access
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UFH Department of Sociology and Anthropology
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | Mambiravana Thesis.pdf | 17 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |