Contemporary South African Urbanization Dynamics

Abstract The paper provides an overview of urbanization patterns and trends in the current era in South Africa, focusing in particular on the key dynamics and driving forces underlying migration and urbanization. It considers overall demographic trends with regard to migration and urbanization, and points to some of the difficulties with data, and with the analysis of trends and patterns. The paper explores the changing rural context and dynamics, and some of the significant processes in this context: large-scale displacement of black people off farms, the impact of land reform, and conditions in the former homeland areas. Circular migration continues to be an important way in which households in rural areas survive, but some are unable to move, and are falling out of these networks. International migration—the consequence of both conditions in the home country and the draw of the South African economy— is another significant process fuelling mainly urban growth. The paper demonstrates the importance of cities in terms of economic growth and employment, and thus their attractiveness to migrants. Continuing migration to cities is of course a challenge fo

Vertical Decentralisation and Urban Service Delivery in South Africa: Does Politics Matter?

Focusing on the case of South Africa, this study examines how decentralisation policies and inter-party politics have affected urban service- delivery responsibilities and resources. Service delivery does not appear to be worse off in Cape Town than in Johannesburg, even though the former is controlled by the opposition Democratic Alliance. While there have been political attempts to undermine the authority of its officials, the fiscal elements are protected by a relatively strong and well-managed department of finance. Consequently, both donors and the national government steer money towards Cape Town because they know it can deliver on its obligations

The State of South African Cities a Decade after Democracy

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