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

Planning
as Implemented
in South Africa Today
4
4.1. An Ambiguous National Context
4.1.1. The Difficult Rebirth of Planning at the End of Apartheid
Apartheid was set up in large part via spatial planning so as to ensure separate spatial
development. Thus, when apartheid ended, authoritarian planning methods had a
bad reputation and it was difficult for the government to use these tools to manage and
control urban development. However, many urban planners saw planning as a way to
“reverse” apartheid’s territorial consequences and create post-apartheid cities. Faced
with this paradoxical view, planning seemed to be a relevant and particularly necessary
tool in general policy programmes, but a real revision of all planning methods was slow
to take shape. Indeed, the other public policies — such as housing or access to
essential services — had, after the end of apartheid, been the subject of massive
restructuring and took radically different directions than those they had had under the
apartheid government. Planning was presented as being necessary. However, the
restructuring of implementation mechanisms only emerged near the 2000s, and then
as a practical and local matter but not as part of national strategy.
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© AFD 2009 Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities