CHAPTER SIX CONTEXT OF THE KSiPP

Introduction

In their study of integration and its limitations in Johannesburg in the 1990s Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell assert that in order to understand and address divided cities, “…there is a need to understand the challenges involved within historical and geographical contexts” (Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell, 2002:196). Robinson (2006) similarly argues that cities are distinctive and need to be seen within their complex social, political, historical and economic realities. This chapter frames the rich context within which the Kathorus Special Integrated Presidential Project (KSiPP) operated. The details of the project itself will be set out in Chapter Seven.

The context for the design and execution of the Kathorus Project was complex. The project’s inception was influenced by multiple forces in various spheres of governance. At a national policy level the development discourse of the pre-election era and the development imperatives of an emerging and young democracy fuelled the need for large-scale visible initiatives. The project drew its inspiration and guidance from emerging national policy as well as from the development discourse of the day.

At regional level lobbying for space in a contested area of development would influence responsibilities for project execution. At a local level the parochial and competing visions of municipal institutions affected decisions. There was also the stark, raging urban warfare and economic decline. An ex post-facto evaluation conducted of the Kathorus Project notes the extraordinary institutional and political context within which this project was born: The KSPP occupies a fascinating historical space. It emerged out of an urban war in the weeks before the first democratic elections. There were 'no go' areas across the face of the three townships and levels of devastation echoed the destruction of the 1976 uprisings in PWV townships. The locally focused development project was furthermore initiated at a time of transitional local government and

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it trod the path of that transition through municipal elections to transformed new local government. The political context of the Project is equally remarkable, reflecting as it did a microcosm of South African society at the time. The deeply polarised ANC/IFP divide was epitomized in pre- election conflicts in the area, as were a range of local level tensions typical of urban townships in the country, but heightened by their peculiar juxtaposition in this setting. The previously white local governments of these East Rand areas were amongst the most conservative authorities in the country, and were in transitional local structures with their counterparts and with civic structures from the former black municipal areas. (GPG, 1999a:3)

This chapter contextualises the KSiPP, and traces the historical, social, political and physical factors that influenced the project design. The context is detailed to illuminate the particularities of the setting and the era in which the project emerged. In addition, the dominant discourses and policies of the time are referenced in order to provide a reflective perspective on the power dynamics, pressures and preoccupations that framed the project. The chapter therefore straddles the general and the particular in mapping the context.

The chapter is structured to examine the context at three levels:

► The locally specific physical, economic and social context of the three townships within the Near East Rand of the Witwatersrand, previously part of a booming manufacturing centre, but, since the 1980s, an area of large-scale decline and socio- political conflict.

► The institutional context at a regional and local level, where implementation of the project was seated.

► The national and international planning and policy context and the developing policy discourses that influenced project design, and associated academic shifts.

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Kathorus in the East Rand: A Context of Economic Decline, Political Conflict

Economic Decline in South Africa’s Powerhouse Just at the point where South Africa needed economic growth in order to ensure a successful transition, the outlook looked bleak. Tomlinson (1994) found that growth rates had been declining for three decades; that per capita GDP growth had been negative for over a decade and that gross domestic investment as a percentage of GDP had declined by fifteen per cent between 1975 and 1990. These trends mirrored an international economic downturn, but South Africa could ill afford an economic crisis. Within this broader economic context, the locally specific issues of employment and affordability in Kathorus were dire, as elaborated below.

The East Rand was significantly affected by economic downturn. This sub-region is estimated to contain thirty per cent of the Gauteng’s official population of 6.9 million people. The South African Cities Network notes that the population growth rate of Ekurhuleni in the period 1996 to 2000 was 22.4 per cent, representing the most rapid growth rate of all the metropolitan cities defined by the South African Cities Network (SACN) (SACN, 2004). The region has always been an important source of manufacturing and remains so at both a national and regional level. In 1988 twenty per cent of national and forty per cent of the then PWV administrative region’s manufacturing output was produced in the East Rand (CDE, 1997). The area was described in terms such as ‘Workshop of the Witwatersrand’, ‘African Powerhouse’ and the ‘Birmingham of South Africa’ in promotional pamphlets of the 1950s and 1960s (Silverman, 1997). However, the industrial decline that became evident in the 1980s impacted severely on this region, particularly in terms of employment. Silverman (1997) counts de-industrialisation, globalisation, changing labour practices (towards smaller more skilled worker bases and away from large unskilled workforces) and changing transportation (away from rail) technology amongst the economic trends that contributed to decline in the manufacturing base and the attractiveness of the area for industry. For much of the late 1980s and early 1990s national economic growth rates ranged between negative figures and two per cent. Unemployment rates soared as the labour absorption

121 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) rate dropped from ninety-seven per cent in the 1960s to seven per cent in 1990 (Swilling, 1997). As decline set in, the East Rand did not benefit from the “typically footloose” location of newer, high tech industries (Silverman, 1997). Joblessness in the area was recorded as being as high as forty per cent (Silverman, 1997). As the apartheid controls began to break down, the PWV and the East Rand in particular became flooded by in- migrants attracted by the prospect of jobs. The conditions of economic decline, however, which coupled with poor administration of Black Local Authorities at the time, meant that more people were vying for increasingly limited and decaying resources.

The clear need for an injection of resources to overcome the economic decline of the region would influence the decisions to approach the new government for priority funding for this area. In turn, the area’s economic importance would motivate the state’s allocation of funding to Kathorus (Interview: KSiPP project manager, 1999).

Bonner and Nieftagodien (2001) note that the townships comprising Kathorus were historically located to serve as a labour pool for the white industrial towns of Germiston, Alberton and Boksburg and grew as offspring of the industrial development on the ‘Near East Rand’. The Near East Rand incorporated the three towns and their African counterparts, the term ‘near’ alluding to their proximity to Johannesburg. The estimated population of the Kathorus townships in the early 1990s was 1.5 million (Gastrow, 1996).

Prior to their near devastation by violence, the former black townships of Katlehong, Thokoza and Vosloorus were relatively typical urban South African townships. While the CBDs, housing environments and general service levels of adjacent white towns were of an extremely high standard, conditions in these historic black areas were more than dismal. Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell (2002) note that racial residential segregation was compounded by vast inequalities in the quality of urban space and allocation of resources. With no revenue base black areas were doomed to be backwaters of the city, with high living densities, low level and poorly maintained basic services, low levels of affordability and poor health conditions.

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In the planning of these areas a limited transport system was provided, allowing essentially only for commuters to be taken to places of work. Vosloorus did not even have a rail link. It also had no medical facilities. Since government policy stated that townships had to be self-financing but ironically barred any commercial development within these areas, financing for basic services was limited. A lack of funding and the presence of local authorities with no popular mandate added decline and deterioration to the inadequate state of infrastructure. By the mid-1980s, Kathorus residents had to contend with outdated and insufficient sewerage systems, limited access to clean water and electricity and a general decline in housing standards, while conditions in the squatter camps were even more abysmal. Where they existed at all, social and recreational facilities were hopelessly insufficient.

During the mid-1980s, the policies of high apartheid that had been followed by the government since the 1960s resulted in a profound civic crisis in Kathorus and townships in other major urban centres in South Africa. The state’s blatant abandonment of housing development for black persons in urban areas led to a situation where, despite the official population of Kathorus being 193,000 by 1979, less than seven thousand houses were constructed in the preceding six years (Bonner and Nieftagodien, 2001). Even during the 1980s only minimal housing was provided in these areas (Bond, Dor and Ruiters, 2000). While the authorities acknowledged the extent of the housing crisis in the townships, they did not commit resources to address the situation. The government’s new housing funding policy, announced in 1983, gave priority to the provision of serviced plots to those who could afford to build their own houses. The second category to be assisted would be individuals with special needs, such as pensioners. Finally, funding would be made available to those earning less than R150 per month (Bonner and Nieftagodien, 2001).

It was evident that housing projects launched by the authorities were hopelessly inadequate and could not meet the needs of the African urban population. While “elite suburbs” were created in the Kathorus townships for those who could afford it, backyard shacks were mushrooming. The convenient location of Kathorus, close to the industrial

123 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) areas of the East Rand, meant a constant influx of poor rural workers into the area. The influx of people continued and a mushrooming of squatter camps resulted so that by 1991 more than 145,000 shacks had been constructed in Thokoza and Katlehong (Bonner and Nieftagodin, 2001). This overcrowding played a major role in the endemic violence that erupted in the area in the early 1990s.

A Context of Multiple Wars Saul points out South Africa entered the twilight zone of the interregnum in February 1990 with the coherence presented until then by a repressive state replaced by the flux of process. A fitful, convoluted and often impenetrable process of ‘talks about talks’, ‘protocol meetings’ and, finally, negotiations was unleashed. This occurred against the background of the convulsive violence that raged across the country – signalling a ‘centrifugal pull’ towards anarchy in South African society. (In Marais, 1998:83) This anarchy manifested in convulsive violence that was most intense in KwaZulu Natal (KZN) and in Kathorus. KZN and the East Rand were intimately linked by the migrant labour system which ensured that a ‘temporary’ labour supply in the form of single migrant men drawn from areas such as KwaZulu were accommodated in single sex hostels in economic agglomerations such as the East Rand. This link was a key factor in the wars that raged in Kathorus.

Chipkin and Thulare (1997) assert that the Kathorus wars are generally explained in terms of a single war with binary oppositions namely Zulu-speaking men against Xhosa- speakers or an undefined ‘township’. Alternatively, it was explained in terms of pre- election attempts by the ANC to consolidate its support or by the IFP to assert its status as a political force beyond the boundaries of KZN, or the impetus and fuel of the war was reduced to an “omnipotent and omniscient” third force. However, Chipkin and Thulare's examination of the history and forces surrounding the warring years reveal several overlapping wars (each with its own notion of the enemy and the allied), which were conflated in popular media and were given a degree of unity by wider developments on the national scene (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997). One of these developments is the spill

124 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) over of labour unionism to township politics. As young militant workers pushed unions to align their struggles with wider struggles for national liberation unionism underwent an increasing political stance, accompanied by increased strike action. But these shifts alienated the vulnerable hostel residents, for whom strike action meant a threat to their livelihood, and consequently to that of their rural families, symbolising a threat to a traditional way of life – already intrinsically threatened by apartheid itself. A space was created for the IFP to define itself as a protector of those traditional values, and the conditions for linking social ethnicity to political nationalism were created (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997). It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to examine ethnicity and nationalism in full.

Secondly, such links also bore fruit in the threat of hostel conversions. Concerns about living conditions in hostels started around 1986. Single men massed together in demeaning living quarters could only have increased a propensity for violence, and the idea of converting hostels into family-type units was raised. This idea resurfaced in the early 1990s, particularly after the violent conflict that broke out between residents of the informal settlement of Phola Park and inhabitants of the neighbouring hostel.

For many hostel residents unwilling or unable to bring their families to the city, conversion potentially meant the loss of cheap accommodation. With the increasing vulnerability of their work situation, and given the importance of remittances from urban areas for the reproduction of rural economies, conversion seemed to threaten the very sustainability of the rural family unit.

Thirdly, the local spark to the conflicts across Kathorus was provided by conflict between Phola Park informal settlement and the Thokoza hostels. Violence there marked the beginning of conflict in Kathorus. Fighting started on the evening of 12 August 1990 when squatters and hostel residents clashed. Twenty people were killed. The following night, Kahalanyoni hostel was attacked, leading to a cycle of attacks and retaliations. Apart from the later politicisation of tensions, associated with national processes, variables were particular to Phola Park and the hostels:

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► a density of 4,000 to 5,000 shacks in a small area;

► intense competition for accommodation;

► no sanitation, schools, electricity or refuse removal;

► only four communal taps;

► a social division between single migratory labourers and those with families. The first conflicts thus seemed to be informal settlement politics and not to apply to the wider township. The real beginning of the war, for many township residents, was only in May 1993 when a civic march to the stadium in Thokoza (to protest against rents and services) was fired upon by hostel residents.

A fourth war identified by Chipkin and Thulare (1997) was the taxi conflict over access to routes in Katlehong, which may have fuelled a militarisation of the wider township. In mid-1990, about fifty people were killed and more than three hundred and fifty injured in taxi-related conflict. Numerous houses were burnt down. Given a split in taxi ownership between township residents and middle-class Zulu speakers who employed drivers from Natal hostels, the conflict soon took on a hostel versus township pattern.

Finally, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission uncovered increasing evidence of the role of the state in fostering violence, with attackers being escorted by the military. The state employed a strategy of maintaining low intensity conflict, exploiting and exacerbating the multiple tensions in many African townships (Marais, 1998). The state’s internal township-based military strategy in the late 1980s was also relevant to Kathorus – it involved a twin approach of repression of insurrectionary forces and development initiatives, aimed at winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of local black populations to legitimise the presence of the military in townships on the one hand and to gather intelligence on the other (Evans and Phillips, 1988). The ongoing presence of the military both in the streets of Kathorus and in leading development positions (for example, the chairperson the Kathorus Task Group mandated with the development initiatives was a military general) in the early planning stages of the Kathorus Special Presidential Project is linked with this presence and with the recognition of the area as a ‘hot spot’ of civil conflict.

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If the reasons for the war and the identity of the ‘enemy’ on any side was unclear even to combatants, to the local authorities charged with managing these areas, it was entirely incomprehensible (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997). And its scale was hideous. The conflict reached civil war proportions during the two years prior to the April 1994 elections: During 1993 there was an average of 140 murders per month. By February 1994 the situation had deteriorated to the extent that, with the full support of the Transitional Executive Council, two and a half to three thousand soldiers were deployed in the area. In fact, from February to July 1994 the military was in charge of operations, with the police supporting the military, an unusual arrangement. (Gastrow, 1996:2) This was hardly a socially united community. Even the lines of warfare did not demarcate community. Within the same political or warring faction people were divided by resource allocation, some being hostel residents living in desperate conditions, some shack residents in search of a secure foothold in the city, some were formally housed without tenure, and yet others had had their homes destroyed in violent conflict. In addition to the conflicts outlined above, there were struggles over development needs. In sum, the project manager would remark of this area, “there were many separate communities, each fighting its own battle” (Interview: KSiPP consultant team leader, 2002).

At one stage, violence in the Kathorus area accounted for “half of all violent incident reports across South Africa” (Shaw, 1996). The majority of the 3 000 people who died in violence from 1990 to 1994 came from Kathorus (Shaw, 1996). Quotations from interviews conducted for evaluations of the KSiPP point to the fearful effects of this violence: “Taxis would stop outside of the area, no one wanted to come in” (Interview: Focus group (a), 2003). Shaw (1996) indicated that Kathorus was equated with violence and that people were immediately scared of you if you said you came from Kathorus. Violence dominated residents’ every-day lives. There were known ‘no-go’ areas where only allegiance to one political party was tolerated and where others crossed at the risk of death. In one gun battle thirty-two people were killed within a few minutes as they left work. It emotionally and psychologically exhausted residents who were already battling severe poverty, unemployment and extremely trying physical conditions (Interview: KSiPP consultant team leader, 2002).

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The Context of Local Government Transition: Institutional Restructuring, Rivalry and Deliberation Forums as Seats of Emergent Discourse The early transition period (before and after the 1994 elections) in South Africa was a time of flux and tension. McCarthy, Forster, Nchunu and Smit (2004) note that forces, particularly on the extreme right, were intent on destabilising the country. There was a determination on the part of a new order, represented by a wide array of extra- parliamentary groupings, political and civil society organisations, private sector interests, etc. to forge ahead with the democratic project. However, this had not yet been tested in an election. As a result there was an emphasis on inclusiveness.

It is important to note that the transition in South Africa was unique in the sense that national transformation and institutional restructuring were accompanied by local state restructuring (Swilling, 1997). Swilling recounts that this overhaul of all levels of state apparatus relates to a large extent to the history – to the decade of defiance (1980s) that preceded the decade of transition (1990s). Locally and nationally constituted social movements driven by students, workers, women and urban residents consolidated in large-scale strikes, demonstrations, consumer boycotts, rent boycotts, stayaways and general mass action, which had a decisive effect by the mid-1980s. However neither the targets nor the social movements could sustain the actions as the targets (white shopkeepers, black local authorities) were deprived of resources and the constituencies of social movements were deprived of services. What resulted were local level negotiations, through local negotiating forums (Swilling, 1997). It was in these structures that the new South African democracy was forged as a culture of consensus-building and governance was developed. They became models for similar structures that emerged at regional and finally national level.

Watson (2002) notes that these forums emerged as the primary institutional vehicle for policy-making in a situation where government retained responsibility for decision- making but realised that it lacked legitimacy to do so. Government’s participation in forums enabled it to influence the form of policies without actually conceding power and

128 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) even potentially co-opting opponents. On the other hand, the non-statutory organisations – such as civic movements and trade unions – were invested in forums as a means of ensuring that the National Party did not use public resources to boost their own popularity at this critical hour, that credit for project implementation did not accrue to government only but to all parties. Furthermore, forums were a vehicle for ensuring that policy debates could be settled prior to election, in order to allow for immediate implementation thereafter (Shubane and Shaw in Watson, 2002). In terms of the development discourse these forums provided a platform where the progressive concerns for the creation of integrated, equitable living environments merged with ‘neo-liberal’ concerns of the competitiveness and efficacy of cities (Harrison, 2001). Compromises between these positions emerged in the policy outcomes of these forums. Yet, the value of debate and consensus-building in forums extended beyond the particular policies that were formulated within these structures. As Swilling and Boya (1995) note, many of the leading participants of these forums who had civic movement backgrounds were to become senior officials in government and both the forum experience and substance would guide urban development thinking and discourse for a substantial period in South Africa’s new state. The forums were, in a sense, “the schools of the new South African democracy” (Swilling, 1997:219). In Kathorus peace forums set the precedence for the Kathorus Task Group, the forum that negotiated the initiation and early passage of the KSiPP, as discussed in Chapter Seven. Forums were also part of a deliberative style of development that would be entrenched in the Interim Constitution and in the Local Government Transition Act (1993). These regulatory frameworks would legally compel political and civil society stakeholders to negotiate.

Perhaps the most significant strategic direction for Kathorus emerged out of the housing debates of the early 1990s. The housing debate and policy formulation for a new housing strategy was relatively advanced in 1994 and certainly housing was conspicuous as the sector most geared for delivery of the development sectors in South Africa. The crucible of that advance was the National Housing Forum (NHF), one of several national level, multi-stakeholder, policy forums. It is noteworthy that the vice-chairperson of that forum was later to be the strategic thinker on the initiation of the Kathorus Project.

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The NHF was set up in 1992 and is credited with formulating the policy that framed housing strategy and activity post-1994 (Huchzermeyer, 2000). The workings of this forum culminated in a National Housing Summit held in October 1994. In policy terms the discussions at this summit paved the way for the new government’s Housing White Paper published in December 1994.

From 1992 until 1995 “the NHF successfully negotiated for the development and implementation of housing policy that fundamentally changed the housing landscape of South Africa” (Rust in Rust and Rubinstein, 1996:4). The capital subsidy scheme, which became the basic mechanism for the delivery of housing across South Africa, the establishment of national and provincial housing boards as the administrators of the subsidy scheme, and the Development Facilitation Act, which was to be a key planning and land development tool, all owe their development to the deliberations of the NHF. The NHF brought together sixteen, and later nineteen, key stakeholder organisations with the aim of negotiating future housing policy and frameworks. Three broad bands of representation existed in the NHF: business, concerned with combating a recession and participating in the development issues facing a new democracy; civic, political and labour organisations seeking access to the policy-making process and eager to begin the process of reconstruction and development prior to a change in government; and finally, development organisations who were receiving ad hoc requests for assistance and were constrained by an absence of legitimate and broadly supported policy guidance. Government, conscious of its diminishing power to govern exclusively, engaged with the NHF in a negotiations process, possibly with the intention of securing a role for itself in a ‘new’ South Africa by effecting development (Rust in Rust and Rubinstein, 1996).1

As indicated, the two key policy frameworks that were influenced by NHF deliberations were the Housing White Paper and the Development Facilitation Bill (later Act) (DFA). The Housing White Paper embodied a new path for housing development based on the understanding that housing is a basic need (Huchzermeyer, 2000). The Development Facilitation Bill was designed to fast track development through improved development

1 Government participated in original discussions but was never a member of the forum.

130 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) and registration procedures and to reform the planning system of the country (Abrahams and Rantete in Rust and Rubenstein, 1996). But key principles were also embodied in the NHF's ‘Overall Housing Strategy’, in its founding documentation and within the agreements and positions reached through its deliberations of various committees of this structure.

The founding agreement of the NHF [under the Statement of Principle] (Nell, Mkhabela, Rust and Du Plessis, 1996:39) established that the objective of this forum was to draw up a carefully negotiated strategy which:

► demonstrates immediate, visible and appropriate delivery on the ground;

► addresses historical imbalances and backlogs in respect of housing with particular focus on members of disadvantaged communities in both urban and rural areas;

► promotes an effective housing process for all;

► promotes social and economic integration in both urban and rural areas;

► facilitates access for the poor to social and commercial amenities;

► enhances the effectiveness of state intervention;

► maximizes non-state delivery capacity [including private sector];

► maximizes the participation of the community in the housing process;

► has quantifiable targets and identifiable accountability; and

► links proposals to national development and economic growth strategies.

This statement was later called the ‘Statement of Principle’ and it remained central to the workings of the NHF throughout the life of the Forum. The key themes that are evident in the statement are useful indicators of the thinking that framed spatial development in the emerging democracy. Broadly they concern immediate, visible delivery, bias to the needs of the poor (including participation of beneficiaries), integration, growth and efficiency, and effectiveness and accountability of state intervention. They are themes that are evident in the Kathorus objectives outlined later.

The NHF had six working groups, which addressed the range of issues identified by members as critical in the formation of an overall housing strategy. These were: land and

131 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) services; delivery systems and housing types (later replaced by strategies for sector effectiveness and efficiency); restructuring the built environment; end user finance and subsidies; institutional structures, roles and fund mobilisation; and hostels. What is important about this is that “restructuring the built environment” was consistently de- emphasised throughout the forum process in the face of seemingly more pressing issues like finance and subsidies. While the land and services working group developed the DFA (1995), they targeted this within a land department – in many ways divorcing it from the housing process. The planning question was therefore given very scant consideration in the NHF deliberations. In spite of this, the seeds of ideas around urban restructuring were prevalent in the working groups tasked with examining issues around restructuring the built environment, services, land, and land use policy. Concepts such as efficient and integrated land use, optimal use of resources, improved access to employment and social opportunities, and encouraging sustainable development were promoted in the Forum (Todes, 2006).

Local Level Institutional Restructuring and Rivalry The role of local governments was to be significantly expanded in the light of the young democracy’s determination to improve urban areas. Swilling notes that (t)he only policy issue about which there (was) complete consensus across the political spectrum is that local government will play a central role in managing the different urban development policies in a post-Apartheid South Africa”, and significantly for the East Rand local authorities that, “…there is also unanimity that local government needs to be thoroughly restructured and transformed to achieve this objective. (1997: 217) It was the National Local Government Negotiating Forum that established the measures for local government transition via the Local Government Transition Act in 1993. This Act provided for the appointment of local government structures with councillors appointed from both the former white local authorities and the political parties that had previously boycotted local government participation. Local government elections in 1995 and mid-1996 would usher in transitional local (and metropolitan) councils for an interim period lasting until 1999, to parallel the finalisation of the national constitution (Swilling, 1997). Swilling (1997:220) notes that the key significance of the transitional

132 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) arrangements is that they “compel(led) political and civil society to negotiate by law”. These local forums were relatively successful, putting in place about four hundred agreements for local government structures across the country in what amounted to a “ground swell of consensus-building around non-racial modes of governance at the grass- roots of society” (Swilling, 1997:220).

Figure 6.1: Map showing Thokoza, Katlehong and Vosloorus (Source: Bonner and Nieftagodien, 2001)

Kathorus presented a fairly typical picture of the administrative tangle that faced local governments in their tasks of amalgamation and restructuring. The close proximity of the Kathorus townships, bounded west and east by the R26 freeway and the N3 to Durban formed a logical planning unit (see Figure 6.1 on page 134). This was particularly so for Thokoza and Katlehong which are contiguous. Yet the area was managed by three

133 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) separate local authorities, first the respective ill-fated black local authorities established in 1983 and then, after the 1995 democratic local government elections, by the racially integrated authorities [transitional local councils] of Germiston, Alberton and Boksburg. Kathorus was thus divided by institutional jurisdiction. This division extends historically to the competitiveness of the East Rand, as explained below.

A regional administration was not easily achieved on the East Rand. The transformation of the state in South Africa meant that each of the local authorities comprising Kathorus faced such a transition. However, the nature of their individual and collective flux and uncertainty was considerably more complex. Controversy raged over the metropolitan or non-metropolitan character of the East Rand for almost decades before ‘transition’. By 1992 there were suggestions that the East Rand follow the model of the Central Witwatersrand and constitute a metropolitan chamber. Over the ensuing years there were several plans, which contradicted each other in terms of whether the East Rand’s metropolitan form was tentative or already complete. The resultant plans and recommendations varied in whether they proposed an integrated metropolitan area or a ‘softer’ metropole with local identities of each municipality being held intact. This tug- o’-war echoed the fierce competition so characteristic of the area. But there were further institutional tensions at a regional level. The then East Rand Regional Services Council (ERRSC) – essentially a regional engineering services decision-making structure – was provoked by imminent changes in government to extend its powers and functions, to transform its blighted apartheid image, and to pursue strategies that would ensure its survival. In what they term “a remarkable feat of historical myth-making”, Chipkin and Thulare (1997) note that ERRSCs had been viewed as agencies developed to throw a lifeline to the much-hated black local authorities. They were a mid-1980s creation and an attempt to address the absence of funding in black areas, but were viewed as too little too late and were rejected or ignored (Swilling and Shubane, 1991). However, the ERRSC in 1994 presented itself as an agent of democratisation, because they had apparently been established for the laudable purpose of upgrading and improving deprived areas.

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The battles resulted in the formation of the metropolitan level Eastern Services Council (later the Eastern Gauteng Services Council) in 1994, a structure now including seven separate, politically independent transitional local councils: Greater Alberton, Germiston, Boksburg, Benoni, Springs, Brakpan and Nigel. The contest for the metropolitan character of the region had, for the time being, been lost (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997) and for our purposes the KSiPP, a cross-boundary initiative, was to tread institutional divides that were almost cultural in their fixedness in the history of this region. The region faced problems of economic decline, of extreme pressure on services, of physical decay and of social and political stress in the wake of the Kathorus wars – problems that the separate local authorities could not address on their own. A further attempt at metropolitanism was made in 1995 when the local authorities of Alberton, Germiston and Boksburg launched an effort to constitute a transitional metropolitan council, hoping that thereby these relatively wealthy councils would be relieved of their financial obligations to the whole region. The proposal was rejected by the Demarcation Board.

The planning impacts of this divisiveness are that the planning and management of these areas were inevitably determined by the parochial and specific priorities that each local authority set for itself, by the particular style of government in that locality and by the authority’s reading of the war (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997). Far from being three local administrations mindful of being bound in a common future, these authorities were pursuing separate agendas in terms of urban visioning of their areas. As Chipkin and Thulare note, the priorities in terms of urban form and institutional arrangements that an authority chooses are important not only in terms of whether or not they are realised, but also in terms of what they reveal and what they obscure. This speaks to the issues that a local authority chooses to abstain from or ignore, because they are not central to its objectives, or are perceived to be too difficult. This in turn relates to the discussion of ethics, power and knowledge in the KSiPP, pursued in Chapter Eight.

There were quite different urban agendas within the Eastern Services Council (ESC) and in each of the local authorities of Germiston, Alberton and Boksburg. Chipkin and Thulare (1997) map these differences. Responding to the Reconstruction and

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Development Programme (RDP), the ESC developed a “framework for the reconstruction and development programme” that would best address the backlogs resulting from apartheid in a “comprehensive and integrated manner” (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997:18). Within this framework the dominant urban form argued was the ‘compact city’. Such associated notions as allowing infill and densification to integrate towns and townships, improved transportation, making social and educational facilities more readily available and small business promotion were generally agreed at workshops with local government official and experts. Yet these ideas implied a regional whole and a common political will at a time when there was deep reservation about the commitment of local level bureaucrats to initiatives that might be unpopular to themselves and to white residents in general (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997).

At the local authority level, each was assessing its own best future and pursuing urban priorities that accorded with those interests. Germiston, mindful of the decline in industry, pursued a vision of encouraging growth in non-industrial sectors and coined the term the ‘balanced city’. This term seems not to conflict with the compact city, but Chipkin and Thulare uncover nuances with regard to interpretations that the authorities held, particularly of the notion of ‘integration’. The ‘compact city’ ideology directly related to the breaking down of financial and physical barriers to the participation of Africans in urban areas. It thus premised development on the inclusivity of all stakeholders. Germiston’s ‘balanced city’ while not excluding racial integration focused on integration as a relationship between industrial and other sectors. It was derived from a notion of development implicitly based on the primacy of economic growth. Boksburg meanwhile believed itself to be the ‘complete city’ and promoted its ‘pleasant living conditions’ in sumptuous terms depicting high quality environments. Alberton, historically least affected by distribution, was noticeable in its opposition to the concept of a metropolitan area. Alberton wanted to protect its fiscal reserves for its own capital projects and avoid these being consumed by repayments on loans due by other municipalities.

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In terms of marketing, the towns on the East Rand believed themselves to be in competition with each other in attracting investment. Persistent rivalrous approaches to marketing prevailed across the area, with the 1993 comments of the then Springs town clerk that he would do everything he could to beat his neighbours in a bid to attract investment not being atypical in the area (CDE, 1997). As a region the East Rand could ill afford the institutional sibling rivalry that split its potential to present a united front to possible investors in the late 1980s.

The Role of Civil Society In spite of the strides in democracy that were made in the early 1990s, the time in which the KSiPP was being operationalised, the outcome of transition at the level of local governance was by no means predictable. Although a unique bottom-up transformation was engineered as local civil society groupings, business and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were brought directly into policy-making processes, Swilling (1997) asserts that this was not politically benign. He notes that at the centre of these processes was the gradual emergence of a new set of urban political elites. These were comprised of leading elements of previous political elites, and new entrants from the liberation, community-based and trade union movements (Swilling, 1997). The question of the role of civil society was open. There was evidence that policy committees were populated almost exclusively by politicians with no room for civil society. More worrying, newly appointed councillors were retaining their involvement with civic structures in a consolidation of party-political control over these. Swilling indicated that local urban governance in South Africa could take a participatory trajectory or a quite authoritarian direction.

The key civil society organisations within Kathorus were trade unions and civic associations, traditionally allies on the struggle against apartheid. Tomlinson (1994) and Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell (2002) note that, at the level of the city, historic alliances between civil society organisations are not necessarily sustainable in the long term. The interests of membership of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) and organised labour, for instance, may be at odds. At a local scale micro politics play a

137 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) factor as there are dangers of local elites dominating organisations. Tomlinson (1994) cautioned against the inclination of SANCO to equate its interests with those of organised labour. He argued that a conflation of the interests of these two groupings was likely to mask the particular concerns of each group, such as issues of neighbourhood services for civics on the one hand or issues peculiar to unionised workers on the other. These tensions as well as tensions between civil society organisations and political parties would complicate the role of civics in the new democracy. In addition, restructuring challenged the associations. Civic associations in the pre-1990s were primarily structured for opposition and confrontation with the state (Mayekiso, 2003). These associations were enormously challenged by the onset of democracy; as they had not only to shift their organisational structure, but also their ideological positions and their definition of the local state (Mayekiso, 2003). In addition, many former civic leaders occupied leadership positions within new local governments and within the African National Congress (ANC). As capable local activists moved into the state, community movements and local unions lost many of their best organisers (Robinson, 2006). This contributed to the civics being in an invidious position in relation to the ANC. Unlike other urban social movements such as trade unions, civics occupied the same local political space as the ANC – sharing the same community and competing for the same membership (Mayekiso, 2003).

Mayekiso claims that a top-down style of development continued to prevail in townships, with projects proceeding with little consultation with the affected communities. At times this development approach led to fierce confrontation between local government and civic organisations. The issues flared in the volatile east rand during the mid and late 1990s. In 1997 an East Rand township, Tembisa, was the site of such confrontation as pre-paid electricity meters that had been installed with inadequate consultation were vandalised by local residents (Mayekiso, 2003). During 1998 residents of Tsakane, also on the East Rand, burned municipal property and blocked the sheriff of the Supreme Court from attaching properties for non-payment of rent (Mayekiso, 2003:72).

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In the face of weakened leadership and uncertainty, SANCO responded bureaucratically. The organisation did not develop a strategy for a future role for civic organisations. Rather it imposed restrictions on local branches. Local branches could not campaign on geographically specific local issues but had to wait for instructions from the national office. Increasingly, local issues were negated by civics and local civics were disempowered as the broader organisation focused on national concerns (Mayekiso, 2003).

It would thus be incorrect to imagine that the KSiPP proceeded in an atmosphere of consultation between the state and organised local residents after ‘peace’ had been achieved in the townships. The region remained tense and issues of local consultation were sensitive.

Changing Discourses and Planning Thrusts of the New Democratic State

“Institutional forms and political relations are crucial in explaining local political choices between emphasising economic growth and the demands of the wider urban context, but so too are the ideas about urban policy that circulate between cities” (Robinson, 2006:150). Those ideas which have taken on the status of an ideology or predominant discourse inform planning practice. History shows that South African planning policy and practice have been highly influenced by international planning discourses (Parnell and Pieterse, 1998). Robinson argues that whether or how these discourses are taken up at a local level depends in turn on the political and institutional context. This argument resonates for the first round of urban renewal projects, set as they were in a period of shifting discourses and of new development trends. The practice of urban renewal in South Africa is intricately linked with the debates around spatial structuring and spatial futures of the city. It is also tied to notions of redress, of focusing development on the poor. It is centrally concerned with debates around reconstruction and around growth. These are the key discourses that surrounded the KSiPP and affected its design and implementation to a greater or lesser extent.

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The principles and themes of the international development discourse echoed, were evident in the policy, documentation and debate around urban development that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s in South Africa. Key amongst the development debates that impacted on the framing of the KSiPP goals were: developmental local government, reconstruction and development, development and growth, fragmentation and integration, urban renewal, New Public Management (NPM) approaches to the role of the state, and a focus on the poor.

An Agenda for Reconstruction and Development Conflict marked cities across South Africa prior to 1990. While not as intense as that in Kathorus, this conflict was widespread. It centred on issues of infrastructure - housing, transport and services, and on the black local authority system, on unequal tax bases and on apartheid itself (Tomlinson, 1994). The conflict was led by civic associations and manifested in rent and service charge boycotts and strong opposition to black local authorities.

A fundamental shift in local politics followed the unbanning of oppositional political movements in 1990. Tomlinson notes that civics were cast as apolitical and would seek to focus on residents’ concerns regardless of their political persuasions. A combative political style was traded for a ‘politics of development’ (Tomlinson, 1994:1). This period saw a wide range of participants in forums focused on development.

There were thus widespread, high level debates around development issues in the build up to democratic elections. This meant that the demise of apartheid and the introduction of a new government in 1994 heralded a time of promise in planning, a profession that had long been a tool of segregationist development. In place of that ideology, there was an embrace of a new development order that espoused integration as well as a reprioritisation of planning towards the needs of the poor and those deliberately spatially disadvantaged by apartheid spatial planning. This was accompanied by a focus on the active rebuilding of places that had suffered destruction in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In fact “urban reconstruction and development (was) seen as the highest development

140 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) priority of the post-April 1994 Government of National Unity” (Swilling, 1997:217). This ethos was encapsulated in the notion of ‘reconstruction and development’, formally the key words of a policy framework – the RDP, popularly a term applied in almost every sphere of endeavour to denote a shift away from ‘the apartheid way’. It seemed that all good things in every field were done ‘in the spirit of the RDP’. But these were terms that were coined amidst a wider development discourse.

It was a discourse that was not the privy of planners. In fact planners and geographers were only minimally represented in the NHF – a key forum for the emergence and concretising of discourses of reconstruction, development and integration in this period. Economists and political strategists and stakeholders held most sway in the development of the RDP, rather than planners.

At the level of policy development, there was no national urban policy. Indeed, Mabin (2000) asserts that even in the transitional period from 1990 to 1994 the government “could be said to have had essentially no urban policy at all”. Rather, several key development thrusts – some, surviving elements of the late 1980s and some, emerging in a new development discourse – coincided and overlapped in the early 1990s. While the SiPPs programme was being designed and implemented, several other national development programmes were being designed and the synergies that exist are not coincidental as policy and programme developments influenced one another and were often designed under the auspices of the same set of departments.2

The RDP strategy was set against a backdrop of housing policy formulation. Along with housing policy then, it provided the best sense of what the post-1994 agendas, strategies and programmes for spatial development in South Africa would be.

Writing of the transitional period in South Africa, Watson says:

2 The Housing Department for instance had responsibility for the drafting of the Development Facilitation Act, the SIPPs projects, the Bulk and Connector Infrastructure Grant Programme as well as the National Housing Subsidy Programme.

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The spirit of the national political transition process, characterised by negotiation, consensus and compromise, as well as strategising and the building of new power bases, set the tone for the flurry of new policy-making in this period. All pre-existing policy was seen to be tainted in some way by Apartheid ideology, demanding new policies to be forged in almost every economic, social, infrastructural and institutional sphere. (2002:45) Amidst this policy-making flurry, the balance of power between the state, labour and the private sector in the pre-election period raised the profile of emergent key development tools. The ANC’s RDP loomed large as an overarching and ambitious plan that cuts across all sectors and it is within this plan that presidential projects were first officially mooted.

As a national development policy framework the RDP has been described as “short- lived” (Beall, Crankshaw and Parnell, 2002:13), and indeed the more neo-liberal economic framework of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy replaced it in June 1996. Yet it was the most fundamental state framework for economic and social development in the early to mid-1990s period of transition to democratic governance. Marais notes that: As South Africa’s political negotiations drew to a close in 1993, the RDP emerged as the most concerted attempt yet to devise a set of social, economic and political policies and practices that could transform South Africa into a more just and equal society. (1998:177) The RDP (RDP White Paper, 1994:9) envisaged a direct link between reconstruction and development, where development referred to human resource development and to economic growth to the extent that “we will also enhance export capacity”.

As Rapoo (1996) notes, the RDP was more than a development framework for the country. It aimed at reordering politics, the economy and society. The RDP Base Document, released in 1994 was centred on five sub programmes: Meeting Basic Needs, Developing Human Resources, Building the Economy, Democratising the State, and Implementing the RDP. The RDP became a “discourse to which almost every actor in the urban planning environment claimed to subscribe” (Mabin and Smit, 1997). It was a

142 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) discourse and a programme that was intended to be delivered through local government: “(T)he Reconstruction and Development Programme cast third tier government as the ‘hands and feet’ of delivery initiatives; that is, essentially as administrative bodies charged with the execution of tasks mandated from above” (Chipkin, 2002b:4). In this framing the role of municipalities was focused on ‘transformation’ to enable them to carry out RDP tasks.

The RDP was however criticised for being too broad and imprecise: “It has come to mean anything anyone wants it to mean; with a little ingenuity, anything can be made to fit in with the goals of the RDP” (Rapoo, 1996:5). Rapoo notes, for instance, that in terms of the first sub-programme, Meeting Basic Needs, the base document suggested that this would be achieved within five years. But the ambitious list of basic needs, including jobs, land, water, housing, telecommunications, a healthy environment, security and others made prioritisation unmanageable and often very locally specific (Rapoo, 1996).

Shifts from Reconstruction to Growth and from Delivery to Management The core principles of the RDP Base Document were altered between its publication and the release of the White Paper. While the earlier version focused on the redistribution and the meeting of basic needs the emphasis of the White Paper was on factors deemed to inhibit growth and investment. Marais (1998) indicates the emergent pressure for fiscal and economic discipline and emphasis on growth. The ultimate ‘six basic principles of the RDP’ focused on:

► An integrated and sustainable programme: Here reference is made to the need for coordinated rather than piecemeal approaches and for the long-term sustainability and affordability of strategies.

► A people-driven process: The need for active engagement and empowerment of people while focusing on basic needs is emphasised here.

► Securing peace and security for all: Reference is made here to the ‘endemic violence’ faced by communities and to violence against women.

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► Nation building: This concept is about consolidating inclusion and a sense of nationhood under the Constitution and about establishing dialogue and unity amongst all parties and people.

► Reconstruction and development: A unified programme of growth, redistribution, reconstruction and reconciliation was envisaged. The key to this was an infrastructural programme as a basis for social and economic development.

► A thoroughgoing democratisation of South Africa: Active participation of people in development is emphasised in this principle, which also embraces the need for the democratic transformation of state structures (RDP White Paper, 1994).

The broad goals of the RDP had to be prioritised against resource constraints and balanced in terms of the election promises made by the ANC and its alliance partners and the new government’s commitment to fiscal discipline (Rapoo, 1996). The joint pursuit of growth and spending to reduce inequality illuminated the new government’s avoidance of making a choice. Rapoo argues that both strategies could not be pursued simultaneously and indeed the emphasis on growth finally won out in national policy when in 1996 the RDP approach was usurped by the GEAR macroeconomic policy.

Chipkin (2002b) finds that whereas the RDP conceives of development primarily as a task of the state, GEAR stresses the importance of the role of non-state players, and in particular of the private sector, in development. The RDP envisaged a transformed state apparatus that would initiate and co-ordinate development and economic growth through public investment in social and infrastructural goods. The new initiative appealed essentially to two values: consensus and transformation. It was assumed that there was national agreement on the broad goals that unified disparate interest groups around the RDP. (Chipkin, 2002b:59) There was an implicit assumption that state had the capacity to realise its objectives and that the task at hand was a managerial, coordinating one. This would prove a false assumption as the implementation of the RDP faced delays and obstacles. These challenges included hostility towards the RDP from many inherited officials and competing demands from business and labour. While that state faced pressures from

144 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) business quarters for a growth-led strategy, it faced pressure from unions for visible delivery (see also Mayekiso, 2003).

The political and strategic change towards GEAR may have been informed in part by these pressures (Chipkin, 2002b). GEAR proposed a medium-term strategy which included a focus on tight fiscal controls and monetary policies to counter inflation, incentives to stimulate investment, a public investment and infrastructure programmes, public sector asset restructuring. For the purposes of development projects, GEAR retained the notion that delivery would happen through projects and capital investment, but it clearly stated that much of the capital investment lay in private hands and that the roles of the state would include policy development that would help to direct private investment appropriately (Chipkin, 2002b).

In many ways, the RDP was about nation building and about national reconciliation. In this context it was the first democratic government’s direct focus on social conditions. It appealed in a personalised way with such slogans as ‘a better life for all’, and ‘building together’. Its replacement with the GEAR strategy was about a shift in which the immediacy of the transition was replaced with a longer-term concern with growth and macroeconomics. Politically, this implied an enormous tension as politicians had to shift from direct delivery of basic needs and personalised politics to an economic and in many ways more abstract programme. This is shown to resonate with the Kathorus Project, which started as an immediate measure to solve a particular set of problems and only later began to consider the long-term implications of those solutions.

The vision of how urban reconstruction will occur in the new South Africa has been termed ‘developmental local government’ (Chipkin and Thulare, 1997; Parnell and Pieterse, 1998).

Pillay, Tomlinson and du Toit (2006) reflect on the sense of opportunity and enthusiasm apparent in the making of policy in the 1990s. They note that “(T)he policies were prepared in great haste and driven by political agendas for the future” (Pillay et al.,

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2006:1). The authors find that polices were at once simplistic and complex. While they set simplistic targets for delivery, they were complex in obliging local government to undertake demarcation, institutional, and financial restructuring, in order to align itself in terms of developmental local government. Parnell and Pieterse (1998) distinguish between a first phase of promise and focus on the RDP, and a second wave of reconstruction, namely developmental local government. The policy for Developmental Local Government (DLG) incorporated the policies and strategies that sought to address spatial, equity and governance issues through local government. The concept was launched in the White Paper on Local Government (1998). DLG focused on … the establishment of democratic municipalities that are in turn structurally dependent on civil society forums for input, vitality and legitimacy. Reoriented spatial planning remain (sic) a pillar of the new dispensation, but it is now joined by notions of integrated urban management, democratic municipal government and fiscal accountability. (Parnell and Pieterse, 1998)

The notion of DLG follows disillusionment with conventional modernist development assumptions, which held that development is a linear process of modernisation driven by rapid industrialisation. The concern for a new approach to development was influenced by factors at global, national and local scales of development. Parnell and Pieterse (1998) outline the factors at various scales that influenced a global discourse on DLG. These include: spiralling debt crises in African and Latin American states, deepening poverty and inequality, contradictions at national levels between fiscal policy and social development needs (as development campaigns were undermined by fiscal constraints); and project level disillusionment as developers failed to meet targets, agencies lacked credibility or consultation with beneficiary communities was weak and ineffective. A key issue in development was the failure of development interventions to understand power dynamics and heterogeneity within poor communities.

As post-apartheid South African policy-makers searched for alternative approaches to address local issues of inequity, poverty, justice and unsustainable city form, they found a resonance with the international development discourse that centred on three themes: urban productivity, environmental sustainability and effective governance (Parnell and

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Pieterse, 1998). Parnell and Pieterse find less international consensus around the nature of economic development. A growing ideology around a neo-liberal economic model competes with concerns about the negative outcomes of structural adjustment approaches.

In South Africa DLG translated into four dimensions (Parnell and Pieterse, 1998). These were:

► Changing the spatial geography of apartheid: The key instrument in this cause is the Development Facilitation Act (1995), which requires all local authorities to establish local development objectives that overtly commit to redressing apartheid inequities.

► Addressing local government finance: This includes measures to align with the policy of GEAR, including improvements in employment and job creation; enhancement of competitiveness of exports, rationalisation of civil service and project level budget accountability.

► Integrating local government management: This principle refers to the role of local government as the key agent for implementation of the state’s new policies. Measures include the preparation of integrated development plans and the coordination of local government management.

► Democratisation of local government: This principle emphasises the autonomy and accountability of the local state and compels local government to engage with its constituent community in development initiatives and in policy-making.

Developmental local government was implicit in the RDP as noted by Chipkin (ibid.). As an explicit policy and institutional concern it followed the initiation of the KSiPP. The project was thus not directly affected by what Parnell and Pieterse term the “second wave of post-apartheid reconstruction”(Parnell and Pieterse, 1998). However, it is clear that enormous tasks faced local government in the move to this second wave. Policy uncertainty as well as deep challenges surrounded the implementation of the KSiPP, which took place from 1994 to 1999.

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The pressure that local government was put under, as a primary delivery agent of the new state’s policies and political promises, was compound by local level capacity constraints. Chipkin (2002b) notes that the state in the 1990s placed considerable effort on ‘change management’, a term that referred to the efforts to align existing institutional capacities with the values and policies of a new government. Amongst the considerations that fed into this process was the notion that old officials, whether willing to implement the directives of new councillors or not, “lacked the experience and knowledge to implement effectively projects premised on a new methodology of community participation” Chipkin, 2002b:65). Affirmative action in the administration was intended to deal with this tension, under the assumption that new black officials shared common interests with their political masters and that both were committed to the developmental concerns of the RDP. It was within this context that the unique moment of power of a key personality such as the KSiPP project manager to actively influence the ‘placement’ of officials in the bureaucracy must be seen. The burden of implementing a large-scale development project simultaneously with the challenge of instituting developmental local government must also be put in perspective. These issues are discussed in later chapters.

Fragmentation and Integration The apartheid city form was characterised by three spatial patterns: low-density sprawl; fragmentation of development in ‘blobs’ (sic) rather than in a pattern of continuity; and maximum separation of races, income groups and land uses (Dewar, 1994:232). This separation was complicated by the racial regulation of space whereby each racially separate segment of the city was governed separately by a different planning authority (Swilling, 1997). This history meant that the concept of integration as a response to existing spatial patterns – a concept that was internationally popular planning idea since the 1980s – had particularly strong resonance and attractiveness in South Africa (Pieterse, 2004b; Harrison in Pillay et al., 2006). It is a term embedded in housing and planning policy and legislation as well as in numerous local plans across the country, which are permutations of the Integrated Development Plan (IDP). ‘Integration’ promised a counter to the racially segregated planning that structured spatial development across the country. Harrison shows that the concept of integration was imported through several traditions

148 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) within planning including regionalism, procedural rationalism and systems theory, radical planning theory and collaborative planning (Harrison, 2001b). Pieterse (2004b) examines the environmental roots of the concept, where integration has been amongst the package of concerns in debates surrounding sustainable development. He points out that the concept of integration is “burdened with multiple meanings” (Pieterse, 2003:122). Pieterse identifies racial integration, urban integration and spatial integration as components of this term.

Notions of ‘compacting’ and ‘integrating’ South African cities emerged in the RDP, which called for a “need to break down the apartheid geography through land reform, more compact cities, decent public transport” (ANC, 1994:83). These notions were carried through to several later policy statements, White Papers and national strategies (Todes, 2006).

The KSiPP’s position in relation to the idea of integration are interesting, precisely because the project’s geographic focus was decidedly racially defined, even in the democratic era and even while the KSiPP was being managed within an integrating and transforming local administration. The cluster of townships is not spatially contiguous (although Katlehong and Thokoza are adjacent to one another, Vosloorus is at some distance from both) and each is arguably more attached and interdependent with its previously white neighbouring town than with the next black township. The spatial definition of this project was, however, removed from the broader policy focus on integrated development and on reconfiguring the apartheid city. It was very specifically concerned with the internal issues of three black townships and was firmly seated in the concerns with ‘reconstruction’. Although it was framed by the RDP and that policy addressed issues of spatial integration (Atkinson and Marais, 2006), the KSiPP was focused at a micro scale, on an internal repair and consolidation of services and facilities rather than with the seemingly longer-term objectives of undoing segregated spatial forms.

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As a project focused on a cluster of black townships, defined without attention to their neighbouring previously white towns, the KSiPP did not deal overtly with integration across racial divides; there was no consideration of mixed race neighbourhoods, for instance. It did, however, deal with integration across political divides and would actively seek to at least partially address social divides through the construction activities of the project, as discussed in Chapter Seven. The project would also seek to address institutional integration in coordinating manifold project activities between various delivery and operational agencies. But the project was rooted within the apartheid city form.

The awkward relationship that the KSiPP had in relation to the concept of integration is relevant for the outcomes of the project. It is also important for understanding the distance between a powerful planning policy and project implementation. It is thus worthwhile to examine the broad debates around the discourse of integration that featured strongly in the 1990s and that continue to be the hallmark of urban policy.

One root of the notion of integration (and related concepts such as compact cities) in South Africa is planning academia. Todes (2006) examines the wide-ranging influence of a small group of University of Cape Town planning academics in developing and disseminating ideas that proved influential in shaping urban policy. Through their teaching and their own writings and presentations on their ideas of ‘well-performing cities’ these academics influenced graduates and planning practitioners across the country. The ideas they espoused critiqued the modernism of the South African city, based as it was on zoning and segregationist land use. They proposed instead compaction and increases in density to enable higher thresholds for economic activity, for service utilisation and for public transport. It was proposed that activity would develop around a grid of interlocking major routes, to which individual development would respond. Mixed use rather than segregated land uses was proposed and integration was also advocated (see Dewar and Uytenbogaardt, 1991). Todes (2006) notes that ‘integrated development’ has several meanings: spatial integration of mutually supportive land uses; a mix of different housing types; a greater mixing of income and of race groups; or

150 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) administrative integration – whereby the social economic and institutional aspects of development are coordinated. These spatial ideas were interpreted by progressive NGOs from the late 1980s and were instruments in the struggles for democratic cities in that period (Todes, 2006).

The ideas around integration were soon upheld as something of a panacea to all the intractable problems of South Africa’s cities (Pieterse, 2004b). Oelofse (2003b) similarly notes that the compact city, which implies the containment of urban growth, increased densities and the spatial integration of diverse uses, has been seen by many as a key to urban sustainability in South Africa. Densification of cities was the major underlying spatial philosophy, and the key means proposed for achieving integration, in the Urban Development Strategy (1995).

In the highly divided urban context of South Africa ideas of using planning instruments to reverse these inefficient development trends were sensible. Mabin (1995) noted that this would require a strong spatial vision and the political will to tackle those political interests that benefit from the divided city. However, the ideas were not above criticism. Turok (1994) found that they were too spatially focused and could be interpreted by developers to justify almost any kind of development. In reality, planning approaches often fail to take account of the political and economic forces that shape investment patterns and entrench patterns of development. Dealing with these would require far- reaching interventionist policies, state regulation and possibly higher taxation to fund initiatives that will promote different spatial patterns (Pieterse, 2004b). Moreover, the ideas of compaction of cities are not straightforward and contain unresolved debates, particularly for how they might be applied in developing countries. In these contexts, lower budgets, shortages of infrastructure, high levels of urban poverty and lower levels of economic development all contribute to the sprawling spatial form. Thus policies that seek to compact cities in the South must also deal with issues of poverty and social inequality (Parnell and Pieterse, 1998; Pieterse, 2004b).

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Pieterse’s finding that integration has been interpreted in several ways is instructive. The way in which the term is used in the national discourse shifted substantially alongside broad shifts from notions of ‘development’ to concerns with ‘growth’. Watson (2003a) tracks the passage of post-apartheid planning in a richly contextualised account of planning practice in metropolitan Cape Town. She depicts how, in the period post-1994, progressive planners were buoyed with the hope of a strongly interventionist urban government committed to issues of urban equity. However, these hopes soon gave way to shifting national policy – policy that increasingly focused on global competitiveness and on attracting foreign investment. Smith talks of the revolutionary zeal of the ANC dissolving into pragmatism in this period (Smith, 2003:31). Planning in turn shifted its focus from a pre-occupation with spatial integration to concerns with institutional and inter-sectoral integration. The concepts of planning and integration became increasingly complex and contested with different agents understanding these concepts within different, if overlapping, frames of reference (Watson, 2003a). Chipkin also finds a definite shift in national policy statements around integrated development towards viewing the concept as “little more than an exercise in institutional coordination” (2003a:8).

Following Watson (2002) and Pieterse (2006), Todes notes that “(B)y the early 1990s, ideas of urban restructuring, compaction and integration had become a dominant discourse”. Pieterse (2006) shows that the ideas of integration gradually retreated in what Todes (2006:56) refers to as the “decline of spatial policy”. A distinct move away from radical spatial restructuring towards concepts of the polycentric city is noted by Pieterse (2006). Pieterse finds that an unwillingness to challenge vested property interests or to impact negatively on economic growth influenced a shift towards compact development in nodes, including development around townships, and away from the ideal of urban integration (Pieterse, 2006; Todes, 2006).

Beneath the conceptual assumptions of consensual politics, partnerships and a logic of shared development principles that inhabit much of early 1990s policy-making, lies much of what Pieterse (2003:128) finds in his critique of the 1997 Urban Development

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Framework (UDF). He notes that the document “displays a romanticised perspective on ‘communities’, an uncritical celebration of partnerships and an over-optimistic approach to what integrated planning can achieve”. The bold policy statements here (as in the RDP) are not backed up with an assessment of the factors that inhibit participatory governance. Pieterse finds that in a context of a lack of resources it is unlikely that everyone will benefit and cautions that severe political contestation will surround resource allocation.

Key Implementation Focus of Reconstruction and Development: (Visible) Urban Renewal Projects The bold and overarching RDP policy framework authorised the notion of large scale, concerted development projects to address urban areas in crisis. Within the RDP framework, lead projects – known as Presidential Lead Projects or Special Integrated Presidential Projects (SiPPs) – were defined. Amongst these, seven urban renewal projects were identified: Kathorus (Gauteng), Duncan Village (Eastern Cape), Ibhayi (Eastern Cape), Botshabelo (Free State), Thabong (Free State), the Integrated Serviced Land Project (Western Cape) and Cato Manor (KwaZulu Natal). These were intended to kick-start development in major urban areas and, in particular, in violence-torn communities and communities in crisis (RDP White Paper, 1994). The key policy objectives of these urban renewal initiatives were to shift government spending priorities and resource utilisation to support poor communities; and to deliver concrete benefits to violence-torn areas. The description of the RDP fund refers to the Presidential Lead Projects as vehicles for state investment and as models for development: A special RDP fund was created to fund Presidential Lead Projects which would kick-start the RDP and become models to be followed by line ministries. The fund was intended to ‘assist the Government in directing expenditure away from consumption and towards capital investment. (RDP White Paper, 1994:16)

The concept of special projects fitted with concerns to integrate development and, with the objectives of joined-up governance, would be resisted by several national departments who preferred allocation through vertically oriented policies. The demonstration of visible delivery was a political concern and part of the need to maintain existing capital

153 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) infrastructure while developing new capital assets in poor areas. This concern directly affected the nature of the development undertaken. Projects focused more on engineering infrastructure and housing delivery than social or economic issues (South African Cities Network and Cities Alliance, undated).

The strategic planning for a Presidential Project in Kathorus was critically and urgently timed to coincide with the opening of the RDP office. That timing ensured that Kathorus became the first official Presidential Lead Project in terms of the RDP. This early launch meant that the formal initiation of the Kathorus Special Presidential Project almost coincided with the release of the RDP White Paper, so whilst the concept of the RDP and the concepts contained within it had been introduced and were in sharp focus on the national stage, there was no clarity around how to implement it. Indeed the lack of clarity was a fundamental problem in the RDP – where “(The RDP) was promoted as a unifying, national endeavour that allegedly transcended parochial interests; the RDP ‘belonged to everybody’” (Marais 1998:177).

The Urban Renewal Projects were chosen for their: visibility (both geographically and in the ‘eyes’ of the nation); relevance and potential for having national impact; capacity to be implemented in the short term; integration with longer-term development goals; and viability, in terms of their contribution towards the establishment of viable communities.

Achievable and visible targets and short-term actions are key elements of the SIPPs language of development. There was an emphasis throughout on demonstrating concrete delivery. Contained also in the NHF’s Statement of Principle, it was a goal implicit in project directives. The Kathorus Project was given one hundred days in which to show visible delivery from the point of funding approval. The imperative in the Presidential Projects, in spite of a national focus on good policy development, was on implementation and delivery (McCarthy et al., 2004). These projects were part of the sweeping promise that characterised the “first wave of post-apartheid reconstruction” in which the SiPPs were launched. It was an era that would later be known for having promised too much (Parnell and Pieterse, 2002:79).

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New Public Management Influences: Pressures for Efficiency, Co-ordination, and Participation Post-apartheid policy in South Africa was not purely indigenous. The rise of democracy in South Africa was met by “a multitude of international influences (that) came to bear on the policy debate in this country” (Harrison 2006:187-188) as key agents of a huge global policy network entered the fray and significantly shaped the content and practice of policy. These included “the major multilateral bodies such as the World Bank and UN agencies; the international development agencies of powerful nation sates such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Germany; private sector consultants, both local and international, and, even, academics” (Harrison, 2006:188). Parnell and Pieterse suggest that in seeking new development frameworks for a democratic South Africa, it was pragmatic for the state “to build on existing development consensus as articulated in various global forums of thinking and policy-making” (2002:79). The result is a clear import of these international policies and agreements on South African policy. Ideas about local government and urban management (as distinct from urban planning) penetrated the South African development terrain in the 1980s through organisations such as the Urban Foundation, and were expanded through the work of the NHF and by academics (Mabin, 2000).

Within this powerful influence the discourse of New Public Management, or urban managerialism, was central. This approach was rooted in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America in the 1980s – countries where neo-liberal administrations were in power. It involved an attempt to bring corporate culture, focused on efficiency and on outcomes, into public agencies. The approach focused on professional management in public agencies, corporatising of public sector departments, introduction of competition in service delivery, outsourcing of services, and an emphasis on output-based performance evaluation (Harrison, 2006).

Harrison has shown that for planning in South Africa the elements of “joined up government”, performance management and participatory governance had significant relevance in the early 1990s. Joined up governance refers to coordination of state

155 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) agencies and followed different models in different countries, ranging from broad voluntary cooperation between agencies in the United States of America, to devolution of executive powers to sub-national levels while consolidating policy powers at the centre in the United Kingdom. In South Africa an increasing requirement for community endorsement and involvement in strategies followed the devolution model (Harrison, 2006).

Performance management was enacted through mandatory outcomes-based performance evaluations linked to the preparation of strategic plans in the Clinton-Gore administration and state and local authorities followed suit (Harrison, 2006). Related to this was ‘rational budgeting’ or the linking of budgets to approved priorities. These concerns reflect strongly in the administrative procedures employed in South Africa in the early 1990s. It will be shown later that the administration of the SIPPs is characterised by a business planning approach. Chipkin (2002a) locates this local approach within the international shifts in development theory and practice away from ‘blueprint’ planning and towards ‘the management approach’. He notes that while blueprint planning focused on the end result and distinguished between planning and implementation, the management approach was concerned with method and not simply with outcomes. For Harrison the South African interpretation is a mix of process and outcome. While he shows that this approach was strongly influenced by the wave of NPM, he also finds that, in South Africa, this has been meshed with objectives of social equality, poverty alleviation and black empowerment as evidenced in the RDP which calls for both the delivery of public services while emphasizing the need for ‘business planning’ and ‘performance management’. (Harrison, 2001b:7-8) The RDP White Paper required provincial and local authorities to prepare annual business plans providing for measurable outputs and performance assessment. The RDP reporting guidelines prepared for the reporting of RDP funded programmes begin with the slogan: To Measure is to Know (Doc. No: RDP/REP. 95.01). The guidelines refer to monthly and quarterly reporting over and above annual business plans that were required for RDP funding, and state that these reports are essential for maintaining fiscal

156 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) discipline, recording progress, highlighting problems and highlighting future important events. McCarthy et al. note that the major effect of the emphasis on business plans on Presidential Projects (in the authors’ case, the Cato Manor project, a contemporary of the KSiPP) was that it shifted projects “away from emphasising policy and broad development goals to being more practically pre-occupied with project management” (2004:96).

In the United States of America participatory governance involved collaboration between the state and its citizens as clients or customers. Tensions between such networking at local level and the pressures of performance management were apparent, as participatory approaches contradicted the more technocratic policy-making of the NPM approach (Harrison, 2006). Similar concerns with the local sphere as the critical space for resolving the complex imperatives of democratic governance and requirements for community involvement and participatory governance expressed themselves in South Africa’s policies.

Focus on the Poor At a national level in the early 1990s the form and responsibility of a post-apartheid state was being intensely debated by multiple national stakeholders. While unanimity was absent in the multiparty negotiating forums, Marais notes that “overshadowing such specific differences, though, was the shared desire to fashion a development path that could redress the legacies of apartheid” (Marais, 1998:84). Given the conscious, systematic underdevelopment of black persons induced by apartheid development practice, it is not surprising that ‘development’ became the cement of many national and local alliances, whether between business and labour or community and local government – so much so that some termed the phenomenon ‘a culture of developmentalism’ (McCarthy, 1991). Development was considered a cornerstone to a new society and to rebuilding a nation ravaged by apartheid.

The case for the centrality of development in a government that was taking shape must be nuanced against a background of the international debates on development at the time.

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Harrison (2001b: 13) notes that “it is difficult to untangle the many intertwined threads of development discourse that have influenced the form that planning currently takes in South Africa…” but notes that these include, inter alia, various local and international influences including participatory and reformist approaches to planning developed by multilateral agencies, top-down planning approaches of socialist and newly independent third world countries, highly politicised notions of development that emerged through the civic movement and progressive NGOs in the 1980s, the shift in approach of the World Bank from a project based to a more integrated approach.

The tenets of this more integrated approach are outlined by Parnell and Pieterse (1998), who argue that South Africa’s transition also marked a re-entry into a world economy and international perspectives on development. Its re-entry to development debates in the 1990s came at a particularly rich moment of reconceptualisation when multiple critiques and perspectives on development were crystallising into a broad consensus that featured:

► The inadequacy of the basic model of industrialisation with its assumptions of ‘trickle down’ in reaching the needs of the poor or protecting the environment.

► The failure of development initiatives to involve the poor.

► The impossibility of ignoring difference and power relations along racial, class or gender lines in development.

► The importance of the needs of the poor as a starting point in development.

► The need for effective governance to ensure sustained interventions.

► The value of strong and diverse community-based organisations to complement good governance.

South Africa became a signatory to several of the global conventions that socialised government and non-governmental constituencies into a new discourse around these themes (Parnell and Pieterse, 1998). But democratisation at institutional level and empowerment of marginalised communities was not only an externally imposed pressure. Unlike the pressures for efficiency and joined up governance, institutional democratisation was the internal drive – the essential ingredient in the new democracy and a key to restructuring the state in a post-apartheid era. To this end the RDP echoes

158 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) the Freedom Charter in stating, the People shall govern. It expands this vision with commitments to empowering the population “through expanded rights, meaningful information and education, and an institutional network fostering representative, participatory and direct democracy” (ANC, 1994:120). The concomitant tension between delivery and participation in Kathorus will be addressed in the case study.

Conclusion

The stage for the KSPP was set by multiple agendas. At the most local level the area was in economic decline, it faced enormous pressures for upgrading of basic services and it was emerging from a period of intense internal warfare.

A nominally united but historically divided institutional context was the vehicle for the delivery of the Kathorus Project. The deep divisions between local governments set a tenuous base for the scale of implementation required, and would rear up in project decision-making. Peace was fragile at the project’s inception and the project was given the ambitious task of bringing stability to the anarchic area.

International policy discourses that would influence the policy thinking at national level included concerns with new forms of local governance, with spatial and institutional integration and with a focus on the poor. International donor pressure and South Africa’s re-entry into world political and economic terrain meant that programmes aligned with the NPM pressures for delivery targets and business planning. How these influenced the focus on expenditure and targets is examined later. The pressure to move away from apartheid planning was high in the rhetoric of development literature and policy-making. Policy was, however, conspicuous in its lack of firm spatial guidelines. The increasingly marginalised role of spatial planning in early debates is noteworthy in terms of the poor carry-through of these concepts in Kathorus and elsewhere.

A focus on the poor led the RDP’s concern with basic needs. The need to deliver in an urgent and visible way to the poorest of South African society would influence the

159 CONTEXT OF THE KATHORUS SPECIAL INTEGRATED PRESIDENTIAL PROJECT (KSiPP) agenda of the Presidential Projects. This was coupled with emerging policy for a development and inclusionary role for the local state. The bold and ambitious policy statements of the emerging democracy centred the state’s delivery hope on projects such as Kathorus. These would be the flagships of the new state’s ability to deliver to the grassroots.

The context within which the KSiPP emerged was thus historic in timing, tumultuous in institutional form and social fabric, embryonic in policy guidance and demanding in terms of delivery expectation. The project entered a vigilant, hopeful scene with little concrete guidance and many political promises to live up to. It is of little surprise in this context that a councillor would later say, “In a period of five years we expected Kathorus to be a miracle” (Interview: Focus group (a), 2003).

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