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Paper short abstract

Extending on the definition of infrastructure as “matter that moves matter” through asking what happens when matter stops moving. The cessation of access to water due to aging, absent and overloaded infrastructure has influenced the citizenship of farmers in a former bantustan under dual governance.

Paper long abstract

In this paper I extend on the definition of infrastructure as “matter that moves matter” by Larkin (2013), through asking what happens when matter stops moving. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at the Ratanang Vegetable Garden in Mankweng, Limpopo, I trace how the cessation of hydrological flows halts crops, undermines livelihoods, and stalls the democratic momentum that once animated post-apartheid South Africa. The transition to democracy promised universal access to water, electricity and other services, infusing citizens with hope. Three decades later, recurrent load-shedding, aging and absent infrastructure, uneven service delivery and lowdensity urban sprawl have produced chronic interruption rather than reliable flow. In Mankweng, within the former Lebowa bantustan, traditional authorities’ allocation of land for residential nd commercial development, combined with practices such as go ngwatha (“to take a bite”) – the diversion of social budgets and the commodification of communal land – have left women at Ratanang with arable land but no dependable water. The promise of water as a human right and in turn, people's citizenship is undermined as they navigate access. Attending to their strategies, frustrations and enduring commitments, the paper conceptualises “lost momentum” as an infrastructural condition: the slowing and stalling of both material circulation and political possibility. By foregrounding hydrological stillness rather than flow, it contributes to anthropological debates on infrastructure, the state and gendered labour, and to rethinking progress, hope and abandonment in contemporary South Africa.