A posthumanist critique of PRASA’s Metrorail infrastructure and its contribution to perpetuated inequalities of the majority, Hatfield, Pretoria

Abstract

This research is contextualised in the post-apartheid urban environment railway infrastructure of PRASA’s Metrorail, which has inherited many stations with built forms, structures and operations informed by the apartheid era’s spatial planning policies, and practices. Apartheid adapted and applied modernist principles to spatial planning, which created built environments of mono-functionality, rationality, operational efficiency, and racial segregation. This resulted in spaces of austerity which currently limits social justice, economic efficiency, and environmental sustainability. PRASA’s Metrorail is currently experiencing infrastructure failure, vandalism, and crime, which has prompted the implementation of station revitalisation strategies as part of their modernisation programme. The modernisation programme aims to also reflect their values of ‘safety’, ‘fairness and integrity’, ‘teamwork’, ‘service excellence’, ‘communication’, and ‘performance driven’. This research investigates the recently revitalised Rissik Station as a case study for similar passenger railway station typologies, to uncover inherited apartheid rational non-human systems that may persist and perpetuate inequity for its users, through a posthuman critique. Applying the posthumanist critique to Rissik Station helps reveal nuanced interactions between the entangled human and non-human actors (hard and soft infrastructures) to understand and make explicit what is implicit about the station that others the human component.