Post-apartheid City Research Articles

Spaces of Democracy: Remapping the Apartheid City

Democracy is associated with particular kinds of spatialities. In this paper I address two aspects of the spatiality of democracy through an assessment of transitional arrangements for local government in South African cities. Political identities, as well as spatial arrangements, involved in democratic politics are associated with instability, uncertainty, and ongoing contestation. In democracies, the contestation both of identities and of spaces is institutionalised and this implies the generalisation of particular spatialities. Drawing on a spatially informed interpretation of the work of Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I argue that the transitional phase in the emergence of democracy in South Africa has involved the growth of a democratic culture—even in situations where substantial compromises have been made to keep recalcitrant white interests on board. I question the assertion of a nonracial politics which seeks to erase the possibility of ethnically based political identities and argue that the failure of the left to hegemonise their perspective of a nonracial political project and a nonracial postapartheid city may have ironically assisted in extending the possibilities for democracy. A key conclusion is that democracies are associated with different spatialities which facilitate contestation and representation. A politics of space, given the radical undecidability of spatial boundaries, is supportive of the extension of democracy.

The geopolitics of South African cities: States, citizens, territory

Much of the research concerning the stark spatiality of South African cities has focused upon the empirical history of segregation and apartheid. this paper offers a theoretical interpretation of the historical meaning of the racially segregated residential spaces that have made up South Africa's urban areas and then considers their changing significance within the transitional post-apartheid urban order. The focus is specifically on the state and the reasons why the racial organization of space was crucial to the exercise of apartheid state power and how this heritage of racial segretation is shaping post-apartheid local government. Exploring the work of michel foucault and making use of an expanded concept of citizenship, I argue that the spatial arrangement of (in this case) african residential areas, and of the form of the apartheid city, was crucially related to the exercise of state power and to the domination of subjects excluded from democratic citizenship rights. Like citizens elsewhere, african people in South Africa's urban areas were bound up in the surveillance networks of the state. These networks operated effectively, i argue, because of the spatial organization of both state apparatuses and residential environments. while much of south african historiography is blind to the importance of spatiality in the construction of state power, this paper makes a strong case that the survival of the apartheid state was centrally dependent upon the geographies that it created. And far from erasing the significance of these racialized spaces, the present transition to democracy has witnessed the emergence of a power-sharing arrangement in local government which has ensured the continued political significance of urban racial segregation. In addition, the relationships between the state, citizenship and space are shown to be as important in the emerging post-apartheid city as they were under apartheid—albeit in a quite different form.

The Changing Post-apartheid City: Emergent Black-owned Small Enterprises in Johannesburg

This paper is concerned with the post-apartheid city and the changing racial complexion of small enterprises developing in the inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa's most important urban centre. South Africa's new democratic government has identified the support and upgrading of small enterprises owned by blacks as a priority policy issue. Earlier research highlights a long tradition of negative official policy attitudes towards black business development in South Africa's central-city areas as part of urban planning under apartheid. Against this background, the paper investigates aspects of the emergent black small enterprise economy in post- apartheid Johannesburg. The results are presented from a recently completed survey of small black enterprises operating in the Johannesburg inner city and of a series of in-depth interviews undertaken with key institutional actors dealing with the city commercial property market. Overall, the findings point to the important and changing role of the inner city as incubator for developing black small enterprises in post- apartheid South Africa.

Financing the Post-apartheid City in South Africa

The recent dramatic changes in South Africa have created new opportunities for altering the country's basic political and economic institutions. Whilst much attention has been focused on the national level, another crucial strand in the reform movement has been efforts to foster truly effective non-racial local self-government which in turn need adequate own-source revenues. With the predicted increase in the urban black populations, the Black Local Authorities, which are supposed to be financially self-sufficient, will come under increasing pressure. A discriminatory electricity price system and boycotts in response to rapidly rising rents further reduce BLA income. Increasingly, BLAs are coming to rely upon user fees and charges to provide services, but unless the fee structures are carefully designed they become regressive. What is required is a single-tax-base including the local property tax and a local income or value-added tax.

Toward the “New South Africa”

Abstract The inherent contradictions of apartheid—political separation in the face of economic interdependence—have long been clear to geographers. The “reformist” response of the Botha government in the 1980s proved inadequate, leaving F. W. de Klerk to grasp the nettle of fundamental change. His actions in 1990 and 1991 set in motion an irreversible process of political change, but the apartheid heritage poses many problems and constraints for ”the new South Africa.” Five issues of prime concern to geographers are examined: the future of the Bantustans, including their “capital cities” and associated bureaucracies; questions of land redistribution, tenure systems, production levels, and support systems; spatial economic policies including those concerning decentralization and urbanization; land and housing in post-apartheid cities; and South Africa's future political and economic relations with her regional neighbors.