Local government, poverty reduction and inequality in Johannesburg (original) (raw)
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Environment and Urbanization, 11(2), pp.107 122., 2000
This paper discusses the difficulties facing the post-apartheid metropolitan government of Johannesburg as it reforms itself, seeking to better respond to the needs of all its citizens, while also attracting new investment. These difficulties include high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality as well as the apartheid legacy of "separate development" with its large backlog of poor quality housing and inadequate basic services, much of it concentrated in former "black townships" and peripheral informal settlements. Limited budgets and overloaded bureaucracy have limited the scale, quality and speed of delivery. Meanwhile, the need for organizational change and for good fiscal performance compete for attention and resources with poverty reduction and with the need for a more integrated, cross-sectoral poverty reduction policy. The paper ends with a discussion of how the principal challenges facing Johannesburg are also challenges for contemporary urban governance in many other cities.
Local government and poverty in South Africa
2010
Despite South Africa’s middle-income status, half its citizens lack adequate nutrition, water, energy, shelter, healthcare and education. In order to address this ‘dismal shame of poverty’ (Mbeki, 1996) the new constitution requires that local authorities ‘give priority to the basic needs of... and promote the social and economic development of the community’. The challenges municipalities face – segregation, institutional weakness, service backlogs and lack of finance – are to be overcome, according to the Local Government White Paper (RSA, 1998a) by establishing ‘Developmental Local Government’, which will ‘work together with local communities to find sustainable ways to meet their needs and improve the quality of their lives’. This chapter considers the prospects for developmental local government to play a leading role in reducing poverty. The first section outlines the context in which South Africa’s post-apartheid local government system is evolving. The second sets out some o...
Local government reform, urban crisis and development in South Africa
Geoforum, 1986
The article aims to interpret the proposed reorganization of local government in South Africa and to examine its development implications in relation to the metropolitan area of Cape Town. The interpretation of reorganization draws particularly on DUNCAN and GOODWIN's suggestion (2~ J. Urb. Res., 6, 157-185, 1982) that reorganization represents an attempt to reimpose the state form. The article places the reorganization of local government in South Africa in the context of the current reform strategy, and argues that it is an element of a strategy which attempts to produce new forms of social relations, ordered to an increasing extent by the market mechanism. The local government strategy reflects this and also responds in particular to the crisis of legitimacy at local government level and in urban areas. This crisis has been precipitated not SO much by forms of representation in local government, as by economic and political conditions in general. However, the reform of local government does not address these conditions, nor does it set up a system of local government in which they might be addressed. In fact, the attempt to reorder society on the basis of the determinants of the market and the resulting emphasis on wealth as a criteria of access to cities, services and power is likely to exacerbate the conditions of unemployment, poverty, spatial inequality and shortages of housing. In effect, therefore, local government reform concerns itself with little more than the management of urban areas in an attempt to contain manifest political problems.
Do Vale and Cameron offer an account of the sweeping process of decentralization in post-apartheid South Africa. The chapter identifies the main characteristics of local asymmetries in South Africa that emerged out of decentralization and explores the institutional dynamics behind these asymmetries. The findings show that the post-apartheid decentralization framework has financially and institutionally enabled mainly the metropolitan municipalities, creating space inequality within the local system of government in South Africa. The chapter also demonstrates through a case study of housing policies in Cape Town and Johannesburg that services vary across metros of different provinces with similar fiscal and administrative capabilities. The chapter concludes that there are several institutional factors behind the creation of an asymmetric regime of place equality in South Africa.
Urban Studies, 43(2), pp.259-284. , 2006
Like other national urban policy documents, the State of the Cities Report 2004 affirms a vision of an inclusive non-racial city in which democracy is stable and development flourishes. But the 2004 report is different from preceding urban policy statements in a number of critical respects, not least that it is not a formal statement of government. In part, the relative autonomy of the Report’s sponsor, the South African Cities Network (a quango of state and non-state affiliates), explains its divergent analytical point of departure in the assessment of the state of the cities 10 years after democracy. The 2004 report is premised on the notion that changing the racial pattern of inequality hinges on systematic responses to the material forces, demographic, economic, environmental and institutional, that shaped the inherited apartheid city form. The 2004 report is also different from earlier government policy positions in that it argues that urban development is not just a site of national reconstruction and development, but that the urban question lies at the heart of achieving the national vision of a productive, democratic and non-racial society based on a vision of sustainable human settlements.
Journal of Southern African Studies, 26(4), pp.833 855, 2000
Urban water supply, sanitation and electricity have been identified as basic needs by the post-apartheid government and the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council (GJMC). This article explores the relationship of Johannesburg's poor to the urban environment and in particular these three key urban services. On the basis of survey data, case studies, textual analysis and in-depth interviews with policy makers and planners, it reviews how poorer citizens were for a long time seen as victims under apartheid urban planning. During the rent boycotts that characterised urban struggle politics during the era of late apartheid in Johannesburg, they were often represented as villains. This perception persisted well into the post-apartheid period, where refusing to pay for services was seen as tantamount to a lack of patriotism. Today, Johannesburg's poorer citizens are increasingly being seen as fixers. The GJMC in its policy document, iGoli 2002, is committed to establishing the commercial viability of service delivery. Cost recovery is seen as important to solving the tension that exists between maintaining established service levels (in historically white areas) and extending services to new and historically under-serviced (mainly black) areas. We conclude that there are opportunities to address urban poverty, inequality and environmental management in an integrated way. However, these are predicated on the GJMC and its advisers understanding the ways in which pro-poor and social justice strategies interface with urban services and the urban environment.
Victims, Villains and Fixers: The Urban Environment and Johannesburg's Poor
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2000
Urban water supply, sanitation and electricity have been identified as basic needs by the post-apartheid government and the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council (GJMC). This article explores the relationship of Johannesburg's poor to the urban environment and in particular these three key urban services. On the basis of survey data, case studies, textual analysis and in-depth interviews with policy makers and planners, it reviews how poorer citizens were for a long time seen as victims under apartheid urban planning. During the rent boycotts that characterised urban struggle politics during the era of late apartheid in Johannesburg, they were often represented as villains. This perception persisted well into the post-apartheid period, where refusing to pay for services was seen as tantamount to a lack of patriotism. Today, Johannesburg's poorer citizens are increasingly being seen as fixers. The GJMC in its policy document, iGoli 2002, is committed to establishing the commercial viability of service delivery. Cost recovery is seen as important to solving the tension that exists between maintaining established service levels (in historically white areas) and extending services to new and historically under-serviced (mainly black) areas. We conclude that there are opportunities to address urban poverty, inequality and environmental management in an integrated way. However, these are predicated on the GJMC and its advisers understanding the ways in which pro-poor and social justice strategies interface with urban services and the urban environment.