Emergency on Planet Cape Town?

Antje Nahnsen Emergency on Planet Cape Town? (Re-)Conciliation as a Tool for Urban Planning in a Post-Apartheid City BIS-Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg BIS-Verlag, Oldenburg 2006 Verlag / Druck / BIS-Verlag Vertrieb: der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg Postfach 25 41, 26015 Oldenburg Tel.: 0441/798 2261, Telefax: 0441/798 4040 E-Mail: [email protected] Internet: www.ibit.uni-oldenburg.de ISBN 3-8142-0988-5 ISBN 978-3-8142-0988-3 Table of Contents Table of Figures 5 List of Abbreviations 6 Acknowledgements 7 Section 1 9 1 Introduction 11 Section 2 25 2 The Culture(s) of Cities 27 2.1 The Ambivalence of Urban Life: Living in a World of Strangers 28 2.2 Ambivalent Reactions 34 3 Spatialities of Desire and Fear: Spatial Politics of Emotion 45 3.1 Spatialities of Desire 46 3.2 Spatialities of Fear 63 4 Cape Town: Desires and Fears in the Making of an Apartheid City 79 4.1 The City of Strangers: The Social Construction of Ambivalence 80 4.2 The City of Control: Dealing with fear through Separation, Control and Regulation of Space 90 4.3 The Sacred and the Feared City: Inscribed Meaning in Cape Town’s Urban Landscape 103 4.4 Challenges for Policies of Transformation 115 Section 3 119 5 The Municipal Spatial Development Framework: The New Spatial Vision for the City of Cape Town 129 5.1 The Aims of the Muni-SDF 129 5.2 The Strategies of the Muni-SDF 130 5.3 Radical Change or Continuity 133 6 The One City Festival: A Strategy for Social Intervention 144 6.1 The Aims and Strategy of the One City Festival 144 6.2 “Teaching a Vegetarian to Eat Meat Again”: The Achievements of the One City Festival 146 6.3 Celebrating Difference: A Stimulator for Change and Transformation? 151 7 New Urban Management: The Reconstruction of a Sacred Place 158 7.1 The Aims of the New Urban Management Approach: Creating the Clean and Safe City 159 7.2 The Means and Strategies of the New Urban Management Approach 159 7.3 New Urban Management: A Fear of Loss and Change? 184 Section 4 203 8 Conclusion: The Need for Spatial Politics of Reconciliation 205 References 217 Table of Figures Fig. 1: The Company Gardens 104 Fig. 2: Jan Smuts Statue in the Company Gardens 104 Fig. 3: The City Hall opposite the Grand Parade 105 Fig. 4: Overlapping Colonial and Modern Spaces 106 Fig. 5: The Central City from the Foreshore 107 Fig. 6: The Civic Centre on the Foreshore 108 Fig. 7: Mosque in Long Street 110 Fig. 8: The Equity Concept of the Muni-SDF 131 Fig. 9: The Grand Parade during the One City Festival 147 Fig. 10: The Castle Reclaimed 149 Fig. 11: Louis Botha Transformed 150 Fig. 12: The Central City and the First Phase Implementation Area of the CID 163 Fig. 13: The Cleansing and Security Team of the CID 165 Fig. 14: No more Garbage in St. Georges Mall? 167 Fig. 15: Mounted Patrol in St. Georges Mall 169 Fig. 16: Informal Trading on Greenmarket Square 174 Fig. 17: Informal Trading in Adderley Street 175 Fig. 18: Informal Trading in St. Georges Mall 176 Fig. 19: Informal Parking Attendant at Work 181 Fig. 20: Advertising E-commerce 182 Fig. 21: New Investments in the Central City 186 Fig. 22: Codes of Conduct for Informal Traders 193 Fig. 23: Fencing off Spaces within the Central City 199 List of Abbreviations ANC African National Congress ACDP African Christian Democratic Party CBD Central Business District CCTV Closed Camera Surveillance System CID City Improvement District DP Democratic Party DA Democratic Alliance Muni-SDF Municipal Spatial Development Framework NP National Party NNP New National Party OCF One City Festival PAC Pan African Congress Acknowledgements This book is the result of my PhD research, which was conducted and docu- mented between 1998 and 2002. The research was funded by scholarships of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FES), to which I express my gratitude. I wish to thank my supervisors Prof. Dr. Walter Siebel of the Carl of Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany, and Prof. Susan Parnell of University of Cape Town, South Africa for their consistent support, critical comments and suggestions. At various stages of this research project, both have helped greatly to clarify my arguments and sent me in fruitful directions for further exploration of my thoughts. I wish to thank Prof. Sue Parnell and the Department of Environ- mental and Geographical Science for welcoming me as an international affili- ate to the department. I owe special thanks to my interview partners and City of Cape Town offi- cials, who contributed generously to this research by volunteering and dis- cussing their views openly. I wish to thank Dr. Anja Peleikis and Stephan Lanz for their time to go through the various stages of the analysis and documentation of the research with me, as well as for their invaluable comments and creative criticism, particularly at the stage of writing. In particular, I am grateful to my family and friends for their encouragement, support and distraction whenever needed, and above all, I am grateful to Alex, the best inspiration of all. Shortly after completing this research project I had the great opportunity to work with SINANI, KwaZulu Natal Programme For Survivors of Violence, a community development organisation situated in Durban supporting processes of healing and reconciliation of individuals and communities affected by political and other forms of violence in KwaZulu Natal. SINANI’s work has enabled me to create a much deeper understanding of extent and dimen- sion of traumatisation of South African people and its impact on the forma- tion and maintenance of social relationships as well as on processes of community development. My work with SINANI has greatly inspired me and confirmed the relevance of research around psychosocial aspects of both socio-economic development as well as the production of urban space. This book is just a start, and remains largely on a theoretical level. I hope it 8 inspires more research to follow, in particular around questions of how to operationalize psychosocial aspects in the day to day practice of urban development. Section 1 _________________________________________________ “We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of the past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity. We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to – Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on a democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; Lay the foundations for a democratic open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by the law; Improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person; and Build a united and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations. May God protect our people.” (From the Preamble, Constitution of the Republic of South Africa) 11 1 Introduction Reconciliation and the City South Africa has surprised and inspired the world as only few countries have done before. Since the ‘small miracle’ of what Nelson Mandela called South Africa’s negotiated revolution from Apartheid to democracy, a conscious effort is being made under the new democratic government to overcome the structured divisiveness of South African society. The creation of a new uni- fied South Africa is envisioned, based on a common and shared vision of society that usually takes on the image of the ‘Rainbow Nation’, which sym- bolises the coming together of disparate pasts in a new common cause. The development of a new South African Constitution was the first and most important project of the Government of National Unity that came into power in 1994. The content of this document attempts to create a dispensation that provides for the co-existence of all people that regard South Africa as their home. This deliberately includes all ethnic, racial and other identities that have been divided in the past and who are now to be united in diversity. The Bill of Rights to which the Constitution and laws of the country are account- able, enshrines the right and freedom to diversity and guarantees equal recognition and treatment of all ethnic and racial identities by the state. The character of the Constitution is at its heart integrative: it recognizes the right to difference and thus recognizes the divergent histories of South African people. It seeks to incorporate those very differences into a coherent new whole that allows unity based on equality. As a result, the Constitution repre- sents a fundamental break with 350 years of colonialism and Apartheid that had conceptualised and used difference to establish and maintain unequal relationships of power, segregation and exclusion, which sought to prevent the creation of a shared South African identity. In addition to the Constitution, the Government of National Unity commis- sioned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as the second, and most visible national project of the first government period from 1994 to 1999. The TRC identified reconciliation and forgiveness as a central prereq- uisite that would be instrumental in achieving integration and national unity. Its task was to deal with the violent past of South Africa, and specifically with the gross human right violations that occurred between 1960 and 1994 12 during the heydays of Apartheid and its immediate aftermath.

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