Abstract
The advent of the fourth industrial revolution witnessed the introduction of digitised boundaries in local municipalities of South Africa. Digitised boundaries are simply imagined lines between spaces. In many rural local municipalities of South Africa, digitised boundaries define territorial bounds as well as people’s identities within the bounded spaces. Several villages in Vhembe District Municipality experienced spatial changes as a result of the introduction of digitised boundaries as recommended by the National Demarcation Board. The introduction of these digitised boundaries engendered widespread protests as community residents raised their dissatisfaction with the new development. In their minds, the ‘new’ Boundaries (digitised) undermined their social base through exclusion from access to services from ‘their’ local municipalities, and thus infringed their rights to belonging. The aim of this paper unravels the politics of digitised boundaries using a case study of Vuwani Village in Vhembe District Municipality of South Africa. The paper (1) highlights the perceptions of community residents of digitised boundaries; (2) characterises the impact(s) of digitised boundaries on community residents; (3) proposes sustainable strategies for managing complexities from digitisation of boundaries in villages from below. This research adopted the mixed methods approach that enables layering methods and methodologies in data collection and analysis. A..