• Apartheid-era infrastructure was racially exclusive by design, not evidence of good governance
• Nostalgia for apartheid’s “order” ignores structural violence and reinforces spatial inequality
• Criticising the ANC is valid, but glorifying apartheid is historically dishonest and morally dangerous
The enduring narrative surrounding South Africa’s post-apartheid trajectory often converges on a singular, critical point: the perceived ANC’s failure to deliver on its grand promises. This critique, amplified by individuals like Prince Mashele, who invariably contrast the present with a romanticised past, suggests an era of pristine infrastructure and efficient governance under apartheid. But this flawed comparison does more than obscure the truth, it actively distorts it.
Nostalgia without context
In a widely circulated interview on the SMWX podcast, Mashele claimed that under apartheid, “there were no potholes on tar roads,” and that traffic lights always “worked.” He continues, asserting that infrastructural decay (non-functional robots and crumbling roads) is uniquely “an ANC thing.” This dangerously reductive view demonstrates selective amnesia. It is not merely a critique of governance, but a subtle sanitisation of apartheid’s spatial and racial architecture.
Mashele’s statements reflect what Frantz Fanon called the “Manichaean world” of the colonial order, where two towns existed: one of order and excess, and the other of filth and want. The black township continues to be “a place of ill fame, peopled by men of ill repute.” The apartheid state maintained clean roads and working traffic lights in white areas not as a national standard, but as a function of racial privilege and spatial control.
Infrastructure by design
What Mashele conveniently ignores is that infrastructure under apartheid was race-coded. Paved roads, water services and electricity were concentrated in white suburbs, while black townships and rural areas were systematically underdeveloped. In my own experience, growing up and living in places like Ntabamhlophe (western KZN) or Ngobi (North West), traffic lights were non-existent. And still they do not exist three decades into democratic rule under the ANC. These areas were not marginalised by accident, but were designed to be so.
To recall apartheid’s so-called efficiency without context is to ignore its structural violence. Mashele’s nostalgia constructs a binary: ANC equals decay, apartheid equals order. This formulation is historically inaccurate and morally indefensible. It is akin to praising the punctuality of trains under fascist regimes while ignoring the concentration camps they led to.
Mashele’s technological nostalgia exemplifies what Jacob Dlamini identifies as “restorative nostalgia,” a desire to recover a mythical past cleansed of its oppressive foundations. In contrast, “reflective nostalgia” offers a more honest reckoning, mourning the loss of certain community certainties without denying the cruelty of the regime that sustained them.
A betrayal of the liberation mandate
The ANC has indeed betrayed many of its foundational promises. Its 1994 Ready to Govern manifesto envisioned one million homes, mass electrification and public works to reverse historical injustice. Instead, the neoliberal turn, engineered with input from apartheid-era finance figures like Derek Keys and post-liberation technocrats like Trevor Manuel, Thabo Mbeki and Tito Mboweni, sacrificed redress for market-led growth.
Auditor-General reports show the state is collapsing, only three out of thirty-five national departments have received clean audits in recent years. Provinces like Limpopo have required constitutional interventions to keep basic services afloat. Mashele is right to be angry, but wrong to use that anger to polish apartheid’s image.
What Mashele misses is that apartheid’s geography was never dismantled. To compare the pothole-free roads of white Pretoria in the 1980s to the present-day failures in places like Ngobi is disingenuous. The question isn’t why Sandton is well-maintained, it’s why Ngobi still looks the same.
Apartheid, rebranded
Post-1994, the ANC built houses, yes, but often on the urban periphery, replicating apartheid’s spatial logic. As urban scholar Neil Klug notes, this created the “40-40-40 rule”: 40 km from the city, 40 square metres per house, 40% of income spent commuting. That’s not transformation, that’s apartheid in new packaging.
Fanon warned that the formerly oppressed may begin to admire colonial systems, not because they were just, but because they were stable. Mashele’s obsession with functioning robots is a symptom of this internalised logic. It’s not truth to power, it’s comfort to whiteness.
Edward Said reminds us that a true intellectual interrogates power rather than echoing its assumptions. Mashele’s critique risks becoming performance, critical on the surface, reactionary at its core.
What memory forgets
Liberation is not about robots. It is about memory, equity and dignity. Mashele’s line, “the ANC broke the robots”, implies a universal apartheid standard that never existed. If the traffic lights worked in white suburbs, it’s because they were never meant to work in Seshego, Ntabankulu or Nkowankowa.
So who is he speaking for? Certainly not the youth who still walk kilometres for water or education. Not the residents of Mogwase, still waiting for paved roads. His lens is suburban, his measure of progress defined by middle-class convenience, not structural change.
South Africa needs a radical reimagining. Mamdani speaks of “unmaking permanent minorities,” reversing segregation through systemic reform. That means land reform, reparative planning and dignified service delivery. It means never again measuring progress by whether white suburbia had smooth roads, but by whether those left behind finally catch up.
To forget who the robots served is to forget who the roads left behind.
Siya yi banga le economy!
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