Local government reform, urban crisis and development in South Africa

Abstract

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 ( Int. 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.