Racial integration in the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s history prior to the 1990s was one of racial division in all areas of life. To investigate the spatial extent of racial integration since the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s, population distribution by race across the Gauteng City-Region was mapped at a ward boundary level using the national 2011 Census, where one dot on the map represents 100 people. While racial segregation is still evident at a regional scale, there has been a gradual mixing of races at a residential suburb level in a number of historically coloured, Indian and white-only suburbs. In contrast, townships such as Soweto and the previous homeland areas of north-western Gauteng remain predominantly black. Although some progress has been made, generations of change are still required to achieve a spatially integrated society in South Africa.