Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities - Agence ...

9. Toward Greater Integration of Public Policy
followed by the arrival of illegal squatters. This reality in the largest South African cities
has generated renovation actions by various actors and has mobilized over time and
in specific geographic zones community and municipal organizations. The examples
of Johannesburg and Cape Town illustrate this.
In 1991, property values in the Johannesburg city centre had dropped
considerably and this worried several of the actors concerned. The municipality,
inhabitants’ communities and private investors came together in a large workshop, which
resulted in 1992 in the creation of the Central Joburg Partnership (CJP), a tri-lateral
organization. CJP concentrates on research on the economic and sociological causes
of urban decay. After this, various bodies successively carried the city centre’s interests 57
until the creation of the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), an independent
municipal body that took care of the city centre only for two years and now intervenes
throughout the municipality. In terms of production, large infrastructure projects were
first launched with public funds, such as Mandela Bridge. Then, the private sector
invested in improving the urban environment (notably Gandhi Square, a transit platform)
and generated larger investments in certain neighbourhoods. Today, the city centre zone
is once again managed by a municipal team that seeks, notably via Social Housing
Institutions, to renovate rundown buildings and create affordable housing in the city
centre. Unfortunately, these renovations have often led to the expulsion of squatters;
the municipality was recently brought before the courts, and for the past year, it has
been obliged to offer re-housing solutions in the city centre.
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In Cape Town, the City Improvement District (CID) mechanism is mostly used. 58
The CID is a (legally supervised) group of private investors that pay additional taxes to
ensure better maintenance of the surroundings in a given zone (more waste removal,
more security police, additional parking systems, etc.). There are fifteen CIDs in the city
of Cape Town. The city centre CID, the Cape Town Partnership (CTP), was created
in 1999 and is the largest. In nearly ten years, approximately 170 buildings in the city
57. The Inner-City Development Forum, created as a consultative body for the three communes concerned,
worked to elaborate a re-development strategy that all the actors would share and accept. Then, in 1996,
an agency in charge of production and operational implementation was created within the municipality, the
Inner City Office.
58. The CID mechanism is also used in Johannesburg’s city centre and other neighbourhoods where there is
economic activity.
Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities © AFD 2009