| Summary: | This study investigates the nature of territory, identity and political authority in three areas affected
by the May 2008 violence against foreign nationals and other outsiders in South Africa: Itireleng
(Laudium), ‘Beirut’ (Alexandra), and Madelakufa II (Tembisa). The study compares the three
territorial orders from the perspective of nodal governance, using a typology of state‐government
and informal nodes, each with dimensions of authority and provision, and asks whether they may
constitute local sovereign forms (sub‐national sovereignties). The study finds a different micropolitical
geography in each case study: in Itireleng, informal nodes of governance gained control over
the means of movement and were locally viewed as legitimate, indicative of a localised sovereign
form. In Beirut, Alexandra, an ‘accidental local sovereignty’ emerged when informal nodes
attempted to supplement formal state controls but found themselves on the wrong side of the law.
In Madelakufa II, violence was seen as illegitimate, criminal behaviour, and the state sovereignty was
strengthened by the repressive response of formal state‐government nodes (in the form of the
police). The three cases illustrate that, while the state remains empirically significant, and state
citizenship retains a resonance that contributes to the production of local forms of exclusion, the
functional dimension, as well as the authority of the state over certain jurisdictions, varies
substantially across spaces within South Africa.
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