Local government restructuring in South Africa: The case of the Western Cape

Abstract

In the current context of reform in South Africa, recent proposals by constitutional planners to restructure the system of local government are significant because they could have a substantial impact on the form and content of political struggle at the local level. Conversely, the evolution of the system of local government can itself be seen to have been altered and shaped by the particular dynamics of social and political change in different local contexts. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the proposed restructuring of local government in terms of the contextual specificity of social and political processes in the Western Cape. The paper is divided into four major parts. The first focuses on the broadly‐based rejection by the coloured population of Cape Town of the system of separate local government structures established under the Group Areas legislation of the era of “grand apartheid”. Certain factors embedded in the specificity of local social and political structures which were central to ...