Urban Governance in Post Apartheid Cities

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Urbanization of the Earth

Series Editor: Heiko Schmid

BBorntraeger Science Publishers

Christoph Haferburg & Marie Huchzermeyer (eds.)

Urban Governance in Post-apartheid Cities

Modes of Engagement in South Africa’s Metropoles

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Urban Governance inPost-apartheid CitiesModes of Engagement in South Africa’s

Metropoles

with 36 gures and 17 tables

Borntraeger Science Publishers • Stuttgart • 2014

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Urbanization of the Earth 13


Urban Governance in Post-apartheid Cities

Modes of Engagement in South Africa’s Metropoles

Dr. Christoph Haferburg

Institut für Geographie

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Wetterkreuz 15

91058 Erlangen

Germany

Prof. Dr. Marie Huchzermeyer School of Architecture and Planning

University of the Witwatersrand

Private Bag 3, Wits 2050

South Africa

Front cover: Cover photograph by Marie Huchzermeyer: Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown, Soweto,

commemorates the 1955 Freedom Charter, the cornerstone of South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution.

In its design, the square symbolises in part the state’s aspirations for post-apartheid urbanism.

We would be pleased to receive your comments on the content of this book:

[email protected]

This publication is sponsored by:

ISBN 978-3-443-37015-2

Information on this title: www.borntraeger-cramer.com/9783443370152

© 2014 Gebr. Borntraeger Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, Germany

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in

any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written

permission of Gebr. Borntraeger Verlagsbuchhandlung.

Publisher: Gebr. Borntraeger Verlagsbuchhandlung

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[email protected]

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Typesetting: DTP + TEXT Eva Burri, Stuttgart

Printed in Germany by Gulde Druck GmbH, Tübingen

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VI Preface and acknowledgements

Foundation. However, the positions taken and views expressed in this book are to be

attributed to the authors and not to any of these organisations.The Editors

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Contents

Preface and acknowledgements ........................................................................... V

List of gures ....................................................................................................... IXList of tables ......................................................................................................... XI

List of abbreviations ............................................................................................ XII

Part I: Urban governance in post-apartheid cities in context........................ 1

1 An introduction to the governing of post-apartheid cities ............................ 3Christoph Haferburg and Marie Huchzermeyer

2 The external and internal context for post-apartheid urban governance ....... 15

Alison Todes

Part II: City visions and urban interventions: engagements of the state ..... 37

3 A critical overview of the instruments for urban transformation

in South Africa ............................................................................................... 39 Mfaniseni F. Sihlongonyane

4 The agonistic state: metropolitan government responses

to city strife post-1994 ................................................................................... 61 Li Pernegger

5 Transforming the post-apartheid city through Bus Rapid Transit ................. 79

Astrid Wood

Part III: The fragile base of the city: currents and dynamics

at community level ............................................................................. 99

6 Contours of urban community politics: learning from Johannesburg ........... 101

Obvious Katsaura

7 Reconceptualising xenophobia, urban governance and inclusion:the case of Khutsong ...................................................................................... 117

Joshua Kirshner

8 Undoing the silencing of the present: the imperative to recognise

the shack settlement as a site of politics ........................................................ 135 Richard Pithouse

9 Entangled or empowered? Networks of grassroots organisations

and NGOs in housing and human settlement processes ................................ 155 Astrid Ley

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VIII Contents

Part IV: Private sector: gaining weight ............................................................ 177

10 City of layers: the making and shaping of af uent Johannesburg

after apartheid ................................................................................................ 179

Martin J. Murray

11 The private security industry in urban management ...................................... 197

Tessa Diphoorn

12 Johannesburg’s Bad Buildings Programme: the World Class City

hegemony at work? ........................................................................................ 211 Margot Rubin

13 Social entrepreneurship and corporate social

responsibility in Johannesburg’s inner city housing and revitalisationstrategies ........................................................................................................ 231

Elisabeth Peyroux

14 The local governance dynamics of international accolades: Cape Town’s

designation as World Design Capital 2014 .................................................... 251 Laura Wenz

Part V: Governing through place and space .................................................... 271

15 Post-World Cup effects and local regeneration

strategies in Johannesburg and eThekwini .................................................... 273

Christoph Haferburg, Matthias Fleischer, Maximilian Fuhrmann and Fred Krüger

16 The sugarcane frontier: governing the production

of gated space in KwaZulu-Natal .................................................................. 295

Richard Ballard and Gareth A. Jones

17 Women and urban governance: the disjuncture

between policy and everyday experiences

in intimate spaces ........................................................................................... 313 Kira Erwin, Orli Bass and Jennifer Houghton

Contributors ......................................................................................................... 327

Index .................................................................................................................... 331

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List of gures

Fig. 4.1: Aftermath of a housing-related service delivery protest

in Alexandra, showing over owing sewerage in the street

and rubble used as barricades by protestors to preventthe entry of police into the township. ............................................. 62

Fig. 4.2: A typical protest stratagem employing a blockade made

of burning tyres .............................................................................. 63

Fig. 4.3: Informal traders protesting against the operations of theMetropolitan Trading Company ..................................................... 64

Fig. 5.1: Fashion Square Rea Vaya Station, Johannesburg ........................... 82

Fig. 5.2: Rea Vaya System Map, Johannesburg ............................................ 83Fig. 5.3: Granger Bay MyCiTi Station, Cape Town (with the Green

Point Stadium in the background) ................................................. 85

Fig. 5.4: MyCiTi System Map, Cape Town .................................................. 86

Fig. 7.1: Merafong City with 2009 local municipality and provincial boundaries ..................................................................................... 121

Fig. 8.1: Foreman Road informal settlement in Durban ............................... 135

Fig. 8.2: Abahlali baseMjondolo at its annual Unfreedom Daycelebration ...................................................................................... 136

Fig. 8.3: Kennedy Road informal settlement after a re ............................. 142

Fig. 8.4: Abahlali baseMjondolo members at one of the bail hearings

for the twelve arrested residents of Kennedy Road informal

settlement ....................................................................................... 146Fig. 9.1: Assemblages and alliances in the sphere of Shack/Slum

Dwellers International in South Africa in 2006 ............................ 164

Fig. 10.1: Poorly integrated gated development in Midrand ......................... 184

Fig. 10.2: Perimeter wall of a gated residential estate in Midrand ................ 187

Fig. 10.3: Strictly monitored entrance to a luxury gated estate in Midrand ... 188

Fig. 11.1: Registered private security providers in South Africa,2001–2011 ...................................................................................... 200

Fig. 11.2: Registered active security of cers in South Africa, 2001–2011 .... 201

Fig. 12.1: Timeline of events in the CoJ, 1992–2008 – the development

and demise of the Bad/Better Buildings Programme. ................... 217

Fig. 12.2: Schematic diagram of different models of the Bad/Better

Buildings Programme .................................................................... 221Fig. 12.3: San Jose residents at the Constitutional Court hearing

in the Olivia Road case. .................................................................. 225

Fig. 12.4: San Jose building. ........................................................................... 226

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X List of gures

Fig. 14.1: The local World Design Capital logo. In a rather self-ironising

manner, its form was inspired by one of Cape Town’s most peculiar design features: the never-completed highway lanes

towering over the central city. ....................................................... 254

Fig. 14.2: Title page of the local Cape Argus newspaper, a day afterthe announcement, visualising the potential of the accolade

for ‘Bridging the Divide’ ............................................................... 259

Fig. 14.3: CTP Managing Director Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana,

Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille, CTP CEO Andrew Boraineand Western Cape Premier Helen Zille jointly present

Cape Town’s bid book. .................................................................. 263

Fig. 14.4: Deputy Mayor Ian Neilson with Vice Mayor of Taipei ChenHsiung-Wen and Oliver Lin, CEO of the Taiwan Design Centre,

at the opening of a special Taiwan Design showcase

at the Design Indaba 2013 ............................................................. 266

Fig. 15.1: Existing corporate headquarters and World Cup-relatedinvestments in Johannesburg ......................................................... 278

Fig. 15.2: FIFA World Cup zoning and planned interventions in Bertrams ... 282

Fig. 15.3: Event-related interventions on eThekwini’s beachfrontas planned in 2007 ......................................................................... 286

Fig. 15.4: Contrasting urban scenarios and developments adjacent

to the beach promenade upgrade .................................................... 287

Fig. 16.1: Maps comparing apartheid zoning with racially dominated

neighbourhoods in the 2001 census ............................................... 296Fig. 16.2: Inanda Road: 2000 (left) showing sugarcane plantations

surrounded by established suburbs and 2011 (right) showing

gated estates in various stages of completion ................................. 301

Fig. 16.3: Welcome! An old entrance to a sugar estate turned gated estate

on the north coast ........................................................................... 302

Fig. 16.4: International investment pours into KwaZulu-Natal ..................... 305

Fig. 16.5: Kirtlington, an ‘equestrian estate’ .................................................. 306

Fig. 16.6: One of the rst houses in Cotswold Downs (Hillcrest) ................. 308

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Haferburg urban Buch.indb 2 02.12.14 13:40

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1 An introduction to the governing of post-apartheidcities

Christoph Haferburg and Marie Huchzermeyer

There should… be no surprise when a space-related issue spurs collaboration (oftendenounced on that basis by party politicians) between different kinds of people, be-tween those who ‘react’ – reactionaries, in a traditional parlance – and ‘liberals’ or‘radicals’, progressives, ‘advanced’ democrats, and even revolutionaries. (Lefebvre[1974] 1991, p. 380–381)

1.1 Introduction

Contemporary urban research across the globe grapples with questions linked to thefunction, approach and inuence of key urban role players, their strategic alliances

and their cooperation across different sectors and spatial scales. While Henri Lefebvre

([1974] 1991), in the quote prefacing this chapter, already recognised this trend in

the mid-1970s, in more recent decades, characterised as an epoch of weaker national

states and increasingly powerful actors outside of traditional government institutions(Brenner 2004), scholars have perceived the role of political, economic and social

interventions on the metropolitan scale as a dynamic of growing importance. The term

‘governance’ as opposed to ‘government’ has come to represent the active participa-

tion by a host of actors outside of government in policy, managerial and budgetarydecisions and prioritisation (Devas 2004). These include private sector organisations,

but also ‘organized constituencies and interest groups acting in the city’ (Beall et al.

2002, p. 16). This ‘relational interaction’ (ibid.) applies mainly to states with demo-

cratic structures, committed to a neoliberal agenda. In such a conguration, two typesof implications come to the fore. First, as a result of privatisation efforts in the 1990s

and 2000s, and due to an opening up of domestic economies, national government

has lost leverage, for example in regard to spatial and infrastructure development,in particular relating to locational decisions made by multinational companies and

real estate developers. This leads to the second implication: when the government

becomes relatively weaker, although power may be more consolidated (Beauregard& Tomlinson 2007), other players gain in strength. Thus overall, the private sector

can be expected to have gained weight, and its exposure to global competition wouldthen also determine the benchmarks of urban development, rather than benchmarks being set by an independent national policy agenda (see Jessop 2002).

However, research on urban governance has also shown that a weaker national state

can create room for (or necessitate) civil society activities and those of social movements

and less organised self-help initiatives (such as informal housing or, in the extreme case,vigilantism). Given the combination of weaker state agency, less restrained corporate

inuence and a possibly more pronounced (and maybe more argumentative) ‘civil’

sphere of urban life, specic ‘urban regimes’ have developed. To some extent medi-

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4 C. Haferburg & M. Huchzermeyer, An introduction to the governing

ated by the local political context, this mix leads to locally embedded arrangements of power-broking that produce specic path-dependencies which can only be unravelledand understood through detailed empirical engagement with the eld (see Stoker 2002).

Traditionally, empirical studies that are informed by an urban governance perspec-

tive try to analyse ‘the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, plan and manage the common affairs of the city … [This] includes formal

institutions as well as informal arrangements and the social capital of citizens’ (UN-

Habitat 2002, p. 14). This denition is mirrored by Selle’s (2012) overview of gov-ernance ideas, or in a more focused view on social diversity and local governance in

sub-Saharan Africa, as Stren (2010) and Bénit-Gbaffou (2008) suggest. Benz & Dose

(2010) point to the importance of reecting on the economic and societal context inwhich governance arrangements are embedded, a nding that dovetails with com-

parative perspectives provided for example by Pierre (2005) and Healey (2006). New

urban governance perspectives (see Hohn & Neuer 2006), as well as contributions

on neoliberal urbanism (Künkel & Mayer 2011; Rossi & Vanolo 2012), stress the ef-

fects of globalisation, as outlined above, and also point to the limits of local actors inmediating these effects. Künkel & Mayer (2011) include justice as a specic point of

reference and attempt to introduce an egalitarian dimension into the debate on urban

governance, thus implying a connection to the ‘Right to the City’.

Given the historical nexus between neoliberalism and globalisation, urban govern-ance is not a new empirical phenomenon. Its conceptual rise coincided with South

Africa’s transformation into a post-apartheid society in the 1990s. In the context of

this volume, we draw on governance-inspired observations insofar as they provide

a broad understanding of urban (sometimes institutional) arrangements in South Af-rica. In our view, therefore, urban governance is a description of a particular way of

understanding the complexities of steering urban development. In South Africa, these

complex modes of engaging with urban dynamics coincide with the historical episode

covered in this book – the post-apartheid period. In this sense, urban governance is alabel for new patterns of intervention linked to specic constellations of actors. The

prevalence of research on urban governance thus signies a raised level of awareness

of these patterns and constellations within cities.

The fundamental observation, however, that the aims, actions and limitations of private sector and civil society have to be included systematically in any analysis of

urban governance does not imply that this wider form of participation is necessarily

better (in any given sense) for urban development. Governance, then (as opposed to

‘good governance’), in our understanding, does not have any given normative implica-tions, either good or bad, although, in this sense, governance-beyond-the-state does

have potentially contradictory effects (Swyngedouw 2005: 1992). The task insteadlies in comprehending the specic patterns and outcomes that we can identify locally,

and situating them within global processes and debates. This must be done without

neglecting the possibility of taking a further step by analysing and addressing thegap between the status quo and the urban futures aspired to. Political reections and

social interactions to arrive at agreement on these futures are under way, for instance

in the already mentioned debate on the ‘Right to the City’.

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Introduction 5

Urban governance strategies in South Africa are closely linked to topics featuringin the international debate on how to understand the alliances and actions that inu-ence urban development, and especially the living conditions of city dwellers. The

intersection of scales, though, is not only manifest in the global-local interaction of

challenges and solutions (as well as theories), but also in the different connections

that exist between the metropolitan scale and thene-grained urban fabric of residentsand communities, streets and buildings, places and spaces (Cornelissen 2009; see also

Simone 2011). In a post-apartheid context where the legacy of spatial segregation

is still very vivid, it is clear that the pattern of richer and poorer sections of the cityleaves many low-income households disconnected from the existing redistributive

and inclusive practices, as well as from related decision-making, emanating from a

developmental policy agenda. At community level, local stakeholders struggle to makethemselves heard, resulting in discontent and social protest (Mottiar & Bond 2012).

Sometimes though, such protest has been an important mechanism through which

citizens have made gains in their efforts to attain improved socio-economic condi-tions. The continuity of locally embedded rights-based actions (see Huchzermeyer

2011) represents an important feature of an emerging South African assemblage of

urban governance in relation to low-income communities.Asking about urban governance congurations thus represents our entry point to an

understanding of the steering of urban development in South Africa. The congurations

are broader than those involving local government (see Parnell et al. 2002), although

engagement with local government is a conceptual precondition. In the reectionsabove, we have alluded to the three main groups of actors deemed crucial in urban

governance: the state, civil society along with social movements, and the private sector.

Their respective ways of engaging with their counterparts and addressing challenges

are acknowledged through dedicated sections in this volume. However, due to thestrategic role of space and place, proximity and distance, spheres and scales – in brief,

due to the different urbanities within each South African city – we have included

a further section dedicated to specic ‘spatial’ modes of governance, that is, those

which rely strategically on localised interventions to address urban challenges, such

as City Improvement Districts or neighbourhood upgrading initiatives (as opposedto targeting specic socially or economically dened groups or sectors regardless of

their location in the city). This may be considered a characteristic element of Southern

urban governance, possibly resulting from a history of socio-spatial engineering and

the heritage of colonial cities that have been built on the idea of ordering the relations

of the colonisers and the colonised by instruments such as cordons sanitaires and peripheral ‘native locations’. Indeed, Parnell & Robinson (2012, p. 593) call for a

‘provincialization’ of urban research in order to be more relevant for the cities of theSouth. Such an approach would need to rely more on inductive theory formulation

based on empirical examples from these specic ‘provinces’ – and it could be argued

that this volume contributes to this endeavour by way of providing detailed accountsfrom South African cities that would need to be acknowledged in their own right.

However, these reports from South African streets and boardrooms also need to be

contextualised in relation to local, regional and global urbanisation and policy trends,

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as well as to theoretical interpretations and insights that have been gained in urbanstudies, in social and political research in the past and present. This is what the rsttwo chapters of this book (this introduction and the chapter by Alison Todes) provide:

a wider empirical context, as well as relevant conceptual points of reference.

The attempt to start a conversation across the conventional ways of framing SouthAfrican urban governance as something subjected to global (economic and political)

dynamics, that is, neoliberalisation, and the frame of reference that acknowledges the

signicant inuence of its specic local history, that is, the post-apartheid condition

with its own dynamics and contradictions, thus forms a leitmotiv of this book. It alsodemonstrates the dialectical approach employed, bringing the empirical ndings to

bear on conceptual ideas that in turn help to make sense of the manifold and often

conicting observations explored in this volume.

But do neoliberalism and post-apartheid conditions as contextual dynamics, withurban governance as a conceptual backdrop, suf ce to explain the course of urban

development in South Africa? In 2014, South Africa celebrates its twentieth an-

niversary of the achievement of democracy. The passage of two decades under the post-apartheid or ‘new governance regime’ (Beauregard & Tomlinson 2007, p. 237)

calls for a careful review of the interpretation that every urban issue can be attributed

either to the legacy of apartheid or to the effects of neoliberal policy. Similarly, theconcept of urban governance, which emerged as the dominant interpretation of the

different but determinable patterns of steering ‘Northern’ (or, though equally prob-

lematic, ‘Western’) cities, must be reviewed. Does a specically South African modeof urban governance exist? Or should we interpret the contributions collected here

rather as an articulation of the urban global South and the postcolonial commonalities

that many countries share?

In the following section, we turn briey to the chapters that make up the body ofthis book and that explore these tensions and debates. In sum they set out to examine

the causes of and articulate possible solutions to current urban questions in South

Africa. The authors were tasked with writing about role players across government,

the private sector and the community that are directly or perhaps inadvertentlygenerating urban challenges faced in South African cities today, and how these are

manifested, and by presenting existing responses to these challenges, showing how

they are being handled and to what extent they are being overcome. Both neoliberaland post-apartheid dynamics feature in the chapters, demonstrating mediation by local

congurations and specicities.

Reliance on

rst-hand empirical material was one of the stepping stones for thiscollection, taking its inspiration from the desire to cast a new gaze on South African

cities, one that does not rely so much on rening stories that have been told all along,

but that tries to reect on the current state of South Africa’s metropoles. Given that theseare still experiencing rapid growth while also facing an array of internal challenges,

handled through quite a variety of approaches, it seems appropriate to re-assess who

actually ‘runs the city’ (Parnell 2007, p. 163), according to which road map, relyingon which drivers and stokers and with what results. While global neoliberalism and

the apartheid legacy are evident in the road maps and as impulses for drivers and

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Themes and contexts covered in this book 7

stokers, in the chapters of this book the rich empirical ndings go beyond this, as briey discussed below.

1.2 Themes and contexts covered in this book

The chapters in this book focus on South Africa’s metropolitan cities as well as their

peripheries, which in some cases are governed by separate municipalities. The book

is structured in ve parts. Following an introductory section, the next three parts fore-front key role players – rst government with its various institutions and approaches,

second the formations of ordinary city dwellers, and third, the private sector with its

increasing inuence. However, none of these groups are examined in isolation, andso we learn about one by exploring the other. While there is a spatial theme running

through the chapters, the last part of the book is dedicated to chapters that help us

understand key role players in governance through a focused spatial lens. As stated

above, this refers to modes of engagement that rely on territorialised interventions(which often go hand-in-hand with infrastructure upgrading, for example in transport

or service delivery), as well as with strategies connected to models of urban design

focusing on public or private space (such as the World Cup-related upgrading of public

spaces or the themed but repetitive features of gated communities).In Part I, Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the conceptual and empirical context of post-

apartheid urban governance. Whereas the current chapter provides theoretical points

of reference and locates the different chapters in relation to one another and widerdebates, Chapter 2 by Alison Todes sets out the context of South Africa’s metropoli-

tanisation, showing the signicance of the ‘metro’ as an institutional form. Providing

the spatial, economic, social and developmental backdrop, she shows a resource-

constrained state facing challenges of growth within a globalising context, yet witha determined provider role which unwittingly sidelines key democratic mechanisms

such as meaningful citizen participation. The implications of this sidelining, as resi-

dents in various formations take action in response to their exclusion from formalgovernance, form the backdrop to a number of chapters.

Part II of the book, making use of different conceptual lenses, explores how the

contextual challenges interact with governance approaches adopted by the state. Theanalysis of a number of foci of state intervention in South Africa’s metropoles points

not only to complexities but also to specicity in post-apartheid urban governance.

In Chapter 3, Mfaniseni F. Sihlongonyane, employing an economic and spatial logic,shows the tension between participatory policy, top-down provisioning by the state,and neoliberal policy/strategy which seeks to facilitate economic growth. He identi-

es the planning and strategic instruments, at times contradictory, which the South

African state has adopted in its wish to full its diverging agendas. His account isone of disappointing outcomes and ambiguity in terms of meeting the needs of the

urban poor. In Chapter 4, Li Pernegger draws on Chantal Mouffe’s theory of agonism,

which understands conict as a necessary aspect of democracy and does not assumethat different stakeholders can necessarily reach consensus. Pernegger explores how

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conict is treated within urban governance in contemporary South Africa, particularlyin the relationship between citizen and state. Intensifying civil unrest, most visible inso-called ‘service delivery protests’, has become a perhaps unwelcome component

of urban governance, distinguishing the last fourteen years from an initial, though

short-lived, post-apartheid period of cohesion. Pernegger’s interest lies in particular inthe interplay between antagonism and agonism. She nds that there are complexities

which prevent the state from consistently applying an agonist response to community

strife, but also questions whether agonism is necessarily always the appropriate gov-ernance approach. In Chapter 5, Astrid Wood points to South African specicity in the

adoption and implementation of global ‘solutions’, in this case the bus rapid transit

(BRT) system. While particular concern for redress, for instance, led to a decision toincrease the number of seats in BRT buses, the particular multi-stakeholder constel-

lation that governed the BRT decision-making process excluded consideration for the

participation of commuters in the decision-making itself. Wood’s account speaks tothe challenges of intergovernmental coordination, the critical importance of political

leadership, the accelerator role of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the importance of the

legislative environment, but also to the exclusion of the most enduring stakeholders,

namely the end-users.In Part III authors present a variety of formations, dynamics and approaches at the

community level, involving neighbourhood as well as wider representation of urban

residents. A central thread is a backdrop of inadequate provisioning by the state,combined with the absence of meaningful participation by organised citizens or resi-

dents, if not the outright dismissal or criminalisation of organised residents’ voices.

Chapter 6 explores community-level politics in a run-down inner city neighbourhoodin Johannesburg. In this chapter, Obvious Katsaura examines how societal structures

(ethno-nationality, ‘race’ and class) shape group politics, at times divisively, and

the political, economic and symbolic approaches of local leadership that attempt tomanage and direct these tensions. While focusing on a cosmopolitan inner city resi-

dential neighbourhood whose demographic composition, community dynamics and

activism have a certain uniqueness in the South African urban history and landscape,this chapter poses particular challenges for the structuring of effective community

involvement in the governance of South African metropoles. In Chapter 7, Joshua

Kirshner’s case study of Khutsong on the West Rand of Johannesburg examines theformation of political identity and subjectivity, shaped by this community’s protest

against and effectively mobilised resistance to a municipal boundary change. This

organising, he suggests, informed its peaceful response to outbreaks of xenophobia asthese escalated into widespread violence across many of South Africa’s townships and

informal settlements in May 2008. Kirshner points to the importance of recognising

and af rming inhabitants irrespective of their nationality, and thus calls for inclusion

as a basic tenet of urban governance.Richard Pithouse, in Chapter 8, reects on his own experience of sustained in-

volvement in popular struggles in South Africa, expressing particular concern about

violent and authoritarian tendencies in urban governance towards the urban poor andtheir organised politics of dissent. He engages with the site of conict which ‘the

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Themes and contexts covered in this book 9

shack settlement’ has come to represent, using the example of the shack dwellers’movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. He calls for forms of urban governance that are‘rooted in solidarity’ and democratic practice. And, lastly in this section, in Chap-

ter 9, Astrid Ley focuses on networks or assemblages involving non-governmental

and community-based organisations in the housing arena. Examining these groups’

involvement and intervention at different scales, and exploring forms of dominationand dependency which occur within these assemblages, she has a particular interest

in the implications of these relations and interactions for urban governance. While

presenting some ndings on solidarity networks as well as more project-based coali-

tions in the housing eld in South Africa, Ley’s main analysis is of the global NGOSlum/Shack Dwellers International. In its assemblages, she nds entanglement and

limited empowerment of local residents.

Part IV turns to the growing role of the private sector in urban governance, withauthors exploring the implications for both city centres and the urban periphery.

In Chapter 10, Martin Murray provides a vivid picture of developer-driven urban

transformation for the middle class and upper-income housing market in Johannes-

burg. He shows how fortied, exclusive and extravagant estates or redevelopment projects, backed by marketing agencies, are increasingly self-contained. Embraced by

homeowners as well as business tenants, these developments stem from a governance

conguration between developers and the state in which private developers are ahead

of municipal planning authorities. Addressing this type of context, Tessa Diphoorn(Chapter 11) examines the pluralised policing and security landscape and its govern-

ance. Conceptually, to explain its implications for urban governance, she applies

a nodal framework, with the private security industry as well as security networksstanding out as dominant nodes, the latter focusing on interactions between the private

security industry, its customers and the of cial state police. An initial post-apartheid

vision of democratic and community-based policing has been replaced, she argues, by a top-down police force expected to operate in partnership with private security

rms, unevenly securing different parts of the city and reinforcing social divisions.

Playing to the interests of private sector domination is the state and metropolitanaspiration for world class status. In Chapter 12, Margot Rubin explores the hege-

monic project of the world class city in the context of inner city Johannesburg, where

a coalition of property owners-cum-developers found backing from the metropoli-tan authority. This alliance informed the Bad Buildings Programme (BBP), which

sought to rejuvenate dilapidated but occupied buildings by making them available to

property developers. The way in which poor residents, subject to eviction, mobilisedand litigated against these practices, ultimately derailed the BBP but failed to ensurethe governance approach called for by the courts, in terms of which poor inner city

residents would be meaningfully engaged. Also locating her research in inner city

Johannesburg, Elisabeth Peyroux in Chapter 13 examines social entrepreneurshipas well as corporate social investment in social real estate housing, in the context of

high rates of unemployment and a strong demand for low-cost inner city housing.

Her discussion of two housing companies shows advances in cooperation between thestate, private sector and community, with benets for instance in the area of safety.

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However, these cases also point to limits to achieving social and economic transforma-tion within a larger pro-growth framework. And, lastly in this section on the privatesector, Chapter 14 turns to the public-private alliance, driven by the creative private

sector, which has been at the forefront of Cape Town’s competitive bid to be designated

the 2014 World Design Capital. Laura Wenz examines its local-global interplay, andshows selectivity and path-dependency in the adoption of a fashionable international

policy. Local governance in Cape Town has become increasingly focused on creative

solutions in urban policy. While the resulting branding and marketing are clearly neo-liberal approaches, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which these processes have

also shown a concern for broadening and transforming decision-making in relation

to challenges such as service delivery.In Part V of the book, space, and with it place, is in the foreground of three chap-

ters that have clear linkages to the themes in Parts II to IV. World class aspirations,

entrepreneurial urban governance, as well as nodal governance, are themes carried

through in Chapter 15 by Christoph Haferburg, Matthias Fleischer, Max Fuhrmannand Fred Krüger. They examine the implications of the hosting of the FIFA World

Cup by South Africa in 2010 through stadium and precinct development in the ne-

grained fabric of Johannesburg and Durban/eThekwini, which formed the context of

a festivalised approach to urban governance, that is an urban development strategy

that relies on branding its location through a string of continually hosted mega-eventsand similar elements of external and internal representation. This triggered diverging

patterns of investment in the two cities, depending on local place-based interests,

institutions and power brokers. In Chapter 16, Richard Ballard and Gareth A. Jones

expand on the theme of private developer-led residential estates for the middle class.They base their chapter on the spatial context of Durban/eThekwini’s inland periphery,

where agricultural land has been rapidly usurped by housing developments themed in

terms of ‘secure country living’. Applying the theoretical lens of Henri Lefebvre, they

show how buyers and future residents co-produce these new high-security neighbour-hoods, yet are manipulated by these spaces which foreground a perception of need for

high levels of surveillance and fortication as well as for parallel governance. Kira

Erwin, Orli Bass and Jennifer Houghton in Chapter 17 are concerned with women’s

experiences in intimate spaces to which the public has partial access, some of whichare privately managed. They suggest that policies sensitive to gender do not reach

suf ciently into these urban spaces. They round off this collection of chapters with

the observation that frameworks of urban governance, whether formal or informal,

shape social relations (in this case gender relations), which in turn ‘subvert and reshapegovernance and its intended outcome’. This underlines the potentially contradictory

effects of governance and returns us to our starting point for this book, namely that

urban governance here is not understood normatively but rather as a complex realityshaping social, economic and spatial dimensions of post-apartheid cities.

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The state of urban governance twenty years into post-apartheid 11

1.3 The state of urban governance twenty years into post-apartheidSouth Africa

Despite many continuities that reach beyond the past two decades, and persistent socio-economic underpinnings, in particular ‘social and economic differentiation’ (Freund

2010, p. 296), the chapters in this volume suggest a post-apartheid urban condition

which deserves some discussion. It is exemplied by the many complexities, chal-lenges and contradictions inherent in the forms of urban governance that have been

adopted at different scales and in public sector-dominated, private sector-dominated or

community-dominated spheres. Corporate and entrepreneurial models of governance,often promoted globally, cross these boundaries and, in conjunction with top-down

state provision or delivery, have squeezed out space for democratic engagement and

decision-making. The chapters in this book suggest that South Africa’s metropolesare marked by a disjuncture and fracturing between these spheres, expressed either

in protest or in the parallel roles played by the private sector in relation to state pro-

visioning, for instance policing.

We now return to the question posed above, whether a distinctly South African modeof urban governance exists, or whether we are merely witnessing the articulation of

the global Southern and postcolonial commonalities that other countries share. While

there is a need, twenty years beyond the defeat of National Party rule, to shift awayfrom treating South Africa as exceptional on the African continent, global trajectories

do not provide full explanations of the current post-apartheid situation, particularly

in relation to governance. On the one hand, there is the continued presence of thediscriminatory apartheid-era population categories in the South African consciousness,

in urban analyses and in some chapters of this book. This is a distinctly South African

trait, and in analyses is necessitated by the need to monitor redress of past discrimina-tion. On the other hand, the chapters in this volume also point to a particularly South

African triangle of tensions between globally promoted, largely neoliberal urban ini-

tiatives (transferred as ‘travelling’ concepts, policies or approaches, perhaps formerly promoted as ‘best practices’), constitutionally required structures and mechanisms for

community participation, and welfare-type social delivery (including housing) (see

in particular Chapters 2 and 3). This combination is unbalanced, with participatorymechanisms often reduced to rituals or rhetoric, while state provisioning or service

delivery (including state-subsidised housing) is unable to achieve satisfactory reach

and, framed as a legacy of apartheid (Huchzermeyer 2003), is characterised by a

largely top-down regime of implementation which further sidelines the voice andchoice of end-users or recipients. Despite this inherent tension or contradiction, with

citizen dissatisfaction increasingly evident, the state has maintained the combination

of neoliberal economic (and increasingly spatial) strategies, participatory policies andtop-down provisioning as a result of enduring pressures: rst, to be competitive in

the global economy; second, and in large part symbolically, to uphold a commitment

to redressing the multiple legacies of the apartheid era; and third (also a dimensionof the former, but often exaggerated through a reductionist mandate), to demonstrate

a powerful commitment to delivering the satisfaction of basic needs. The latter,

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Freund (2010, p. 286) notes, is where ‘the municipality is most visible and mostacutely judged’, as evident in the protests, community actions and social movementcampaigns which form the backdrop to the chapters in Part III of this book.

The implications of three global initiatives implemented in South African cities are

addressed in this book – the BRT (Chapter 5), the World Design Capital (Chapter 14),and the FIFA World Cup (Chapter 15). Each account suggests a path-dependency that

reects the global origins of the projects, and an element in which the commitment

to redress the legacy of apartheid has inuenced the shape of these initiatives in

South African cities, but perhaps more in symbolic ways than by embracing resident participation and inclusion within these initiatives. The legacy of apartheid remains

a determining factor, shaping the very social relations which, as argued by Erwin et

al. in Chapter 17, in turn shape governance and vice versa. Part of this legacy is thelargely continuing socio-economic disadvantage of those formerly discriminated

against by the apartheid regime. Thus, the divisive apartheid categories, referred to

as ‘population groups’ or ‘races’, are (as mentioned above) present, but treated cau-tiously in this volume. However, while it seems as yet impossible to delete them from

the South African urban studies vocabulary, questions of governance today require

us to examine other structures that diversify and in part divide society, and shape itsinteractions. Ethno-nationality is a complex divider, which space-based identities are

able to overcome in the case of a municipal boundary dispute (Chapter 7), but less

so in a complex inner city neighbourhood (Chapter 6). But class-based divides arecemented and reinforced anew through the shape of urban development, whether in

inner city regeneration strategies (Chapters 12 and 13) or suburban inll and greeneld

developments on the metropolitan peripheries (Chapters 10 and 16). From below, theseare experienced, along with the uneven, pluralised policing system (Chapter 11), as

a bitter impediment to overcoming the divisions of the apartheid city. This combines

with the experience of top-down, if not violent, provisioning or delivery by the stateand the criminalisation of dissent (Chapter 8) – elsewhere, Freund (2010, p. 285)

speaks of ‘the top-down, centralising strategy enshrined in ANC practice’ and the

‘striking gulf that yawns between popular perceptions of needs and the discourse

of the state’, patterns revealed clearly in this volume’s analyses. Confrontation be-tween the state and dissenting citizens has been managed unevenly or inconsistently

(Chapter 4), and whether global non-prot actors have the approaches with which to

achieve meaningful empowerment at this disenfranchised grassroots level, throughmulti-actor assemblages, is called into question (Chapter 9).

There are important dimensions of governance that this volume does not address,and which will be relevant in understanding South Africa’s urban trajectory beyondthese rst twenty years of constitutional democracy. One that stands out for us, and

is implied in the quote by Lefebvre that forms the epigraph to this chapter, is that of

different political orientations, along with their modes of engagement. While importantwork exists in this regard (see Bénit-Gbaffou 2012), it is clear, given the prospect of

greater political diversication with the possibility of the formation of a workers’ party

during the 2014–2019 term of government, that it becomes imperative to understand the

role of political parties, along with political ideologies and their possible moderation

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Haferburg urban Buch.indb 60 02.12.14 13:40

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4 The agonistic state: metropolitan governmentresponses to city strife post-1994

Li Pernegger

4.1 Introduction

‘[Y]ou need conict to move on. You need conict to cause change, and [to] cause

change to move forward …’ So says Sean Dinat, the former head of the Informal

Trading Programme of the City of Johannesburg, (interview, Dinat, 16 November

2012). But to what extent and how do democratic cities in South Africa managestate-citizen confrontation in a constructive way to bring about positive change? As

the rst national democratic elections in South Africa were being held in 1994, new

state institutions were already being established. Scrupulous attention was dedicated

to the ‘democratisation’ of the local sphere of governance (Cameron 1996) – the level

of government closest to its citizens. Despite a robust developmental agenda (Khosa2002) with rationally designed, well-intentioned, inclusionary state-citizen participa-

tion processes, urban governance efforts have had uneven impacts. Poor communities

principally in metropolitan areas have responded with the seemingly irrational anger

of service delivery protests (Cameron 2000; Picard 2005; Von Holdt 2010).This chapter provides new insights for state practitioners and urban activists into

post-1994 responses by the state to service delivery protests, from the perspective

of the metropolitan municipality of the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) rather than fromthat of the citizen. In this period, four distinct phases of the CoJ’s institutional devel-

opment can be distinguished. Throughout the following narration, the local state’s

reactions in each phase are scrutinised through the lens of agonism. Unlike Scott’s(1998) censure of the state’s capabilities in dealing with dissensus or Pierre’s (1999)

stance on state-citizen disharmony as an unwanted condition that the state seeks to

dispatch speedily, Mouffe’s (2000) political theory of agonism as well as the writings

of Swyngedouw (2014) underscore the centrality of conict to governance and its potentially positive effects on deepening democracy. Whilst authors such as Mot-

tiar & Bond (2012) and Parnell (2007) have focused on the human rights aspects of

conict, and Alexander (2010) and Von Holdt et al. (2011) on party-political contes-tation as the drivers of protests, this chapter draws on Pieterse’s (2008) recognition

of the inherent conict in the complexities of urban governance and offers a closerinterrogation of the state’s reactions to discord over time in its daily practices, thusoffering a different and stimulating perspective on state-citizen conict. Both positive

and negative factors have been found to have impacted on the local state’s handling

of strife, with the CoJ exercising a changing and uneven capability to act agonisti-

cally, that is to handle conict as a positive force for democratic change rather thanas a destructive element.

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62 L. Pernegger, The agonistic state

4.2 The concepts of service delivery, protest, dissensus,consensus and agonism

The term ‘service delivery’ has no common denition in South Africa. Building on

the commentaries of Municipal IQ (2009, 2010), the term can mean the institution ofgovernment and all its resources and processes involved in the provision of any service,

as well as the service itself, to the ordinary citizen. Services typically provided are water

and electricity supply, refuse removal, street cleaning, public transport, infrastructureinvestment, some health services, housing, parks, street trading and market stalls, and

social amenities. But Mc Lennan (2009) points out that service delivery undertaken ‘in

the name of justice’ expands to include intangible development ideals parcelled up withexpectations of democratic government to improve the lives of South African citizens.

The promise of transformation and of reversing the damage of the apartheid past, aswell as of meeting basic needs, is contained in the Freedom Charter, the Constitution,

political manifestos (African National Congress 2011), policies of post-apartheid South

Africa and, more critically, in the minds of citizens (Harber 2009).

Fig. 4.1: Aftermath of a housing-related service delivery protest in Alexandra, showing over-owing sewerage in the street and rubble used as barricades by protestors to prevent the entryof police into the township.Source: Photograph by Times Media (2014)

As frustrated South Africans have come to realise that the promise has not been de-

livered on, dissatisfaction against the state has been vented in the form of what have

typically been called ‘service delivery protests’. These are generally ‘protests-with-

pickets’ featuring highly visible crowds with pickets and banners and staged mostly

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The concepts of service delivery, protest, dissensus, consensus 63

as impromptu events (and frequently accompanied by police, as seen in Fig. 4.1).They seem unstructured, impulsive, explosive, intermittent and once-off. Alexander(2010) calls them ‘local protests’ which can be peaceful or pugnacious. Marches may

be legal, or illegal if the required permission from the state has not been obtained

by the protestors. Stratagems of protestors-with-pickets typically include marches,demonstrations, setting up of barricades (as seen in Fig. 4.2), digging up of roads,

property vandalism, brandishing of weapons and toyi-toying – a form of protest dance

in South Africa involving singing and stamping of feet.

Fig. 4.2: A typical protest stratagem employing a blockade made of burning tyresSource: Photograph by Independent Newspapers (2014)

Posing a particular urban governance challenge for metropolitan municipalities,

protests-with-pickets mostly originate within the poor communities of underdeveloped

townships and informal settlements (Booysen 2007). In the case of Johannesburg, the

areas usually affected are Soweto and Orange Farm in the far south of the city, andDiepsloot, Alexandra and other informal settlements and townships on the north-western

and eastern peripheries of Johannesburg’s middle class suburbs. Protests are usuallyalleged, legitimately or otherwise, to be a show of dissatisfaction with the lack of

basic service delivery and housing in poor neighbourhoods, with city centre informal

trading development and management (as evidenced in Fig. 4.3), with the presenceof foreigners (Von Holdt et al. 2011), with government maladministration, or with the

lack of voice of ordinary residents. They may be stand-alone incidents, or form part

of a series of other forms of protest linked to the issues at hand, such as petitioning.

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Fig. 4.3: Informal traders protesting against the operations of the Metropolitan Trading Company

Source: Photograph by Keith Atkins (2002)

However, not all protests take the form of the protests-with-pickets which are thefocus of this chapter. ‘Protests-with-pockets’, undertaken mainly but not exclusively

by the middle class, are another dominant type of protest worthy of investigation.

Mechanisms employed by the relatively wealthier and well-capacitated rate-payingcommunities located in suburbs such as Sandton, Randburg and other former white

Johannesburg suburbs tend to include litigation, petitions, media campaigns, sit-ins

and voting stayaways, but generally not street-based protests. They are more likely to be sustained over long periods of time than are the impromptu protests-with-pickets.

The post-apartheid state, especially at the local government level, bore the brunt of

approximately 578 protests-with-pickets in the streets of South Africa between 2004and 2012 (Municipal IQ 2012). The number peaked at 173 protests in 2012 alone,one-third of all the protests documented since 2004 (ibid.). Protests-with-pickets have

become a prevalent form of conict against state action or inaction. The protests have

grown in frequency and violence, with signicant vandalism, damage to property andloss of life (Karamoko 2011).

Searching for explanations for the attitude of the South African state towards

protests, academia has focused on the intricacies of governance and the mechanicsof service delivery, including the importance of public participation (Parnell et al.

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The concepts of service delivery, protest, dissensus, consensus 65

2002). The emphasis in the literature has been on the institutional design challengesof a transitioning state that needed to be equipped to deal with the extensive backlogof infrastructure and services, and the state’s inability to deliver services especially at

the local government level (Atkinson 2007). However, the view of the state in relation

to the management of the myriad daily state-society confrontations and negotiations

encountered during the provision of those services has not been contemplated indepth. Rather, writers have been captivated by the multiple aspects of the protests-

with-pickets themselves and the voice of the protestors, especially since about 2004.

As early as 1997, Peberdy & Crush (1998) observed enmity of some South Africans

towards foreigners expressed during service delivery protests by street traders. VonHoldt et al. (2011) argue that xenophobic attacks are inextricably intertwined with

service delivery strife. Landau (2011, p. 72) corroborated this view when he stated

that protestors-with-pickets who specied discontent at service delivery levels were

just as likely to be the same ones who expressed anti-foreigner sentiments. However,Alexander (2010; Von Holdt & Alexander 2012), whilst acknowledging the potential

for interaction between service delivery protestors and striking labourers, and between

service delivery protests and attacks on foreigners, posits that there is evidence thatanti-foreigner unrest is distinct from service delivery protest. But since anti-foreigner

assaults are frequently mingled with service delivery protests, these anti-foreigner

protests are considered in this account.Handmaker & Berkhout (2010) and Mottiar & Bond (2012) also identify the com-

plexity of the causes of protests, including the demands for basic services as well as

for participation in decision-making. Alexander (2010) emphasises poverty as thekey driver of protest. There is also an intersection of service delivery protests with

the political stability of South Africa (Beall et al. 2005). Booysen (2007) and Matlala

& Bénit-Gbaffou (2012) point to the dif culty of reconciling local politicking with party politics, whilst Oldeld & Stokke (2004) note the relevance of protests for the

reconguration of power and the social order. Ballard (2005) and Ngwane (2010)

identify protests as battles for human rights.

Institutions of the state in the global arena are governed largely by democratic principles of consensus, deliberation, participation and rationality where the aim –

simplistically – is to eradicate dissensus as speedily as possible through deliberation

(Forester 1999). Thus governance tends to be founded on participatory democraticand planning theories that assume that state-society negotiations are largely peaceful,

but interspersed with episodes of conict which are seen as counterproductive to the

furthering of democratic ideals and needing to be resolved as quickly as possible.However, if one sees democratic processes rather as a navigation along a continuumof conict scattered with moments of consensus, the model of ‘agonism’ proposed by

the Belgian political theorist Mouffe (2000) offers an alternative lens through which to

view the stance of the South African state on strife. The theory of ‘agonism’ (ibid.) is based on the notion that conict is a vital and necessary facet of democracy and can be

a positive, rather than a destructive, force for change. Interpreting Mouffe (ibid.), and

Wingenbach (2011), an ‘agonistic’ institution is thus one that displays behaviours andundertakes processes in keeping with the principles of ‘agonism’. Further, a ‘universal

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rational consensus’ (Mouffe 2000, p. 22) does not exist. Thus, applying agonism inan urban governance context means accepting that consensus can never remain static,will always be incomplete, and is part and parcel of agonistic iterative processes that

constantly recalibrate the state-society relationship in the pursuit of democratic ideals.

Mouffe also distinguishes between ‘agonists’ and ‘antagonists’. Agonists are‘friendly enemies’ (ibid., p. 13) who share a common goal but may disagree on the

route followed to reach that goal. These adversaries struggle in a state of ‘agonism’

until they reach agreement. An antagonist is an ‘enemy to be destroyed’ (ibid., p. 102).

‘Politics’, the assemblage of government entities, their dialogues, systems and conven-tions that make up state governance, must be designed to create stability for society in

conditions that are impacted by antagonism (ibid., p. 101) – despite any dissimilarities

in ‘politics’ that may be expressed by the different parts of the state. Also, then, the

job of state institutions is to transform antagonism into agonism (Wingenbach 2011)

through the provision of channels of expression that allow antagonists to becomeagonists in order to negotiate agreement. The predisposition for such negotiations to

be agonist and constructive is based furthermore on the consistent demonstration of

a deep respect for ‘the Other’ (Mouffe 2000, p. 129).

4.3 The intersection of strife and City of Johannesburg institutionaldevelopment over time

A brief timeline of the CoJ’s post-apartheid institutional growth at the intersections

with the multiplicity of service delivery protests reveals the CoJ’s propensity, or lackof it, to deal agonistically with conict episodes over time. Starting with the rst

democratic local government elections held in Johannesburg in 1995 (rather than

with the national elections of 1994) in order to align with consecutive mayoral termsof of ce, four key intervals reecting the CoJ’s institutional progression have been

identied. Data about protests in each period and the state’s response thereto have

been derived from 39 qualitative semi-structured interviews with CoJ of cials andaf liates in 2012 and from a thematic analysis of thousands of pages of news articles,

press releases, state websites and reports, and data from select secondary literature.

4.3.1 Transformation: 1996–2000

Between 1996 and 2000, the processes of local government change that had startedin 1994 in accordance with the terms of the 1990 Soweto Accord (Turok 1993) mark

the transformation period of the CoJ. Municipal reform gathered momentum, ulti-mately leading to the formation of the CoJ founded on the notion of developmental

local government as both ‘of cial policy objective and broad strategic framework’

(Parnell et al. 2002, p. 79). The former thirteen municipal administrations that hadseparately governed the black, coloured, Indian and white areas of Johannesburg dur-

ing apartheid times were amalgamated, concurrent with similar makeovers at national

and provincial levels of government.

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BRT sweeps South Africa 81

Table 5.1: South African BRT adoption processes, 2006–2011

Johannes-burg

CapeTown

Tshwane NelsonMandela Bay

eThekwini Rusten-burg

July 2006 – Presentation by Lloyd Wright at Southern African Transport ConferenceAugust 2006 – Department of Transport brings international transport consultants to cities

Study tour Aug. 2006 Nov. 2007 Feb. 2007 2007 2002 Nov. 2011

Council support Nov. 2006 Aug. 2008 May 2007 May 2007 May 2012 2009

Constructionbegins

Oct. 2007 Sep. 2008 Aug. 2008,stopped,restartsJul. 2012

Begins in2008is stopped,has not yetrestarted

2012 Jul. 2012

Launch date Aug. 2009 May 2011 2015 – 2015 2015

Source: Data drawn from interviews with city politicians and of cials in Cape Town, Johannesburg,Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay, eThekwini and Rustenburg

details of BRT implementation across South Africa, covering the adoption processincluding dates of study tours, council approval and commencement of construction.

These processes have been anything but straightforward, and riddled with political

and technical uncertainty. This section summarises the adoption experiences acrossthe six cities that exemplify the paramount features of each system.

BRT ‘arrived’ in South Africa in July 2006 at a special session of the Southern

African Transport Conference sponsored by the Council for Scientic and IndustrialResearch in Tshwane. This annual conference is the largest transport conference in

the region, and serves as a critical platform for dialogue on issues ranging from -

nance to public transport. Lloyd Wright, a global expert on BRT, was invited to hosta day-long workshop at the conference on the principles, attributes and engineering

specications of BRT. This learning was reinforced in August 2006 through a series

of workshops held in Cape Town, eThekwini, Johannesburg and Tshwane, and target-ing both politicians and transport planners in these cities. Interested cities typically

then took a select group of representatives from the city administration and council,

the taxi industry and the consulting and construction industry to Bogotá, Curitiba,

Guayaquil and Quito (Ecuador), and a host of other South American cities to see theirBRT systems. While this was certainly not the only instance of BRT experimentation

in South Africa, Bogotá’s model, TransMilenio, proved more persuasive than previousversions of the model, and therefore these visits were a fundamental moment in theadoption of BRT across South Africa.

Municipal planners and politicians in the City of Johannesburg were inspired by

these 2006 presentations and a few weeks later a team which included the mayoralcommittee member, the Executive Director for Transport and Executive Director of

the 2010 FIFA World Cup as well as representatives from the two local bus companies

(Metrobus and Putco) and the two largest minibus taxi associations (JohannesburgRegional Taxi Council and Top Six Taxi Management) visited BRT systems in Bogotá,

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82 A. Wood, Transforming the post-apartheid city

and Guayaquil (interview, anonymous of cial, City of Johannesburg, 3 February 2012).They returned from their study tour eager to replicate the successes of TransMilenio

and in November 2006, the Johannesburg City Council approved the adoption of

BRT. Another study tour took place in August 2007. Construction on the 25.5 km and

30 stations of Phase 1A of Johannesburg’s BRT system, Rea Vaya, began in October2007, just 16 months after political and technical leaders had rst become interested

in the Bogotá model of BRT. In August 2009, Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya BRT system

became the rst full-feature BRT on the African continent, promising to inauguratea new era in South African public transport.

Rea Vaya, which translates from Sotho as ‘we are moving’, includes three service

types: trunk lines (for use only as busways), complementary routes (which collect pas-sengers outside the busway), and feeder routes (which collect passengers for transfer

to trunk lines) (see Fig. 5.1). The main trunk line (T1) runs from Thokoza Park to

Ellis Park East with twenty stations along the way, and three complementary and vefeeder routes (see Fig. 5.2). Stations are located roughly 500 m apart. Rea Vaya was

the only system in South Africa operational during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, moving

an estimated 300,000 spectators. At a cost of R2.5 billion, Rea Vaya’s success can be

Fig. 5.1: Fashion Square Rea Vaya Station, JohannesburgSource: Photograph by the author (March 2012)

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Fig. 5.2: Rea Vaya System Map with Metrorail and Gautrain, JohannesburgSource: Cartography by author (August 2014)

assessed through its ability to incorporate the minibus taxi industry into BRT operation

– PioTrans, a consortium of former minibus taxi operators currently manages Phase

1A – and its ability to continue building subsequent phases. The Council approvedPhase 1B in November 2008, and construction on the 18.5-km route and 10 stations

between Noordgesig in Soweto and Parktown began in November 2010; services began

operating in October 2013. The total cost for Phase 1B was R3.5 billion. Construc-

tion on further lines will continue until 2018. Once complete, Rea Vaya will include122 km of busways and 805 buses, and 85 per cent of Johannesburg’s inhabitants will

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84 A. Wood, Transforming the post-apartheid city

nd a Rea Vaya trunk or feeder service within 500 m of their place of residence orwork (City of Johannesburg Transportation Department 2011).

Cape Town became enchanted with BRT in January 2007 when Lloyd Wright and

Ibrahim Seedat, the Director of Public Transport Strategy at the National Department

of Transport, came to Cape Town to meet with Mayor Helen Zille.1 Wright presentedthe story of BRT and Bogotá’s successful implementation of TransMilenio, and the

Mayor responded by expressing interest in adopting the BRT system in Cape Town

(interview, anonymous consultant, City of Cape Town, 3 April 2012). Two study

tours were undertaken; rst a team of city of cials and consultants went to Bogotáin November 2007 and then another group, which included minibus taxi operators,

went there in November 2008 to learn details of BRT construction and engineering,

operations and maintenance as well as specications for the rolling stock and non-

motorised transport (interview, anonymous of cial, City of Cape Town, 3 July 2012).Construction on what would be called the MyCiti IRT (Integrated Rapid Transit) system

began in September 2008 and Phase 1A began operating in May 2011.

As in Johannesburg, the objective for the MyCiTi IRT is to provide services for 75 per cent of households within a 500-m radius of each station. Services include trunk

services, feeder services, trunk extension and supporting pedestrian and bicycle facilities

(non-motorised transport) with stations every 800 m (see Fig. 5.3). Phase 1A (sometimesreferred to as the MyCiTi starter service) operates from outside the Civic Centre in the

central business district (CBD), travelling up the R27 route to Table View (Fig. 5.4).

Phase 1B, which expands the services within the West Coast corridor from Du Noonto Century City via Montague Gardens, is expected to open at the end of 2014. The

total cost for Phase 1A including road works, stations and buses is expected to exceed

R4 billion (total expenditure between 2006 and 2012 was R2.3 billion), and Phase 1B

is expected to cost R710 million (City of Cape Town 2012). Among the city’s majorachievements is its extraordinary Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which controls

the bus services, ticketing and signage. Cape Town was the rst South African city to

employ an ITS, including a smart card payment scheme which improves operationalmanagement and enables intermodal transfer. The City’s IRT programme also involves a

comprehensive restructuring of the city’s transport services, which embraces the creation

of a local transport authority to act as the planning and contracting agency managing

and regulating MyCiTi operations, existing Golden Arrow bus services, and aspects ofthe rail function. Anal achievement is the inclusion of the two former taxi associations

in the operating companies TransPeninsula and Kidrogen. Two challenges faced during

the implementation process were the city’s slow rollout – which meant that during the2010 FIFA World Cup MyCiTi only operated a shuttle services between the Civic Centreand the airport as well as a temporary loop around the downtown area – and the high

operating costs, which make nancing the system dif cult (City of Cape Town 2012).

1 There was an earlier attempt to implement a BRT system along Klipfontein Road inCape Town which began in 2002, but the plan was not passed by the City Council and noconstruction took place.

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Fig. 5.3: Granger Bay MyCiTi Station, Cape Town (with the Green Point Stadium in the back-ground)

Source: Photograph by the author (February 2012)

Nelson Mandela Bay was the rst city to be charmed by the idea of transforming its

public transport network through BRT in 2006, and the second city to approve a BRT

plan in council and to visit Bogotá in 2007. Local political challenges, however, stalledthe project before construction began. One of the major challenges in Nelson Mandela

Bay was weak municipal leadership, which failed to reconcile with the minibus taxi

industry. In July 2010 the municipality did, however, purchase 25 BRT buses, which sat

idle until Algoa Bus, the municipal bus company, leased them in mid-2012. It remainsunclear whether the municipality will continue to pursue a formal BRT system (interview,

anonymous consultant, Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, 18 July 2012).

Tshwane was similarly eager to implement BRT locally and in May 2007, theTshwane Rapid Transit Implementation Framework was completed. Progress on the

project stalled in 2010 due to conict between national government and the municipal-

ity regarding the alignment to Soshanguve.2 National government was concerned that

2 Soshanguve is a township located 25 km north of Pretoria, established in 1974 as part of theBophuthatswana homeland. It was incorporated into the City of Tshwane in 2000. The sitingof many townships on the periphery of the city is a challenge for post-apartheid urbanism.

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Implications of local path-dependency for policy uptake 259

Fig. 14.2: Title page of the local Cape Argus newspaper, a day after the announcement, visu-alising the potential of the accolade for ‘Bridging the Divide’.Source: Cape Argus (26 October 2011)

In 2009, a year after Icsid had successfully tested its WDC idea in Torino, the organi-sation held its annual general board meeting in Cape Town. The event was hosted by

a local team of leading scholars from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology

(CPUT) in the university’s capacity as educational member of Icsid. Thus, the dean

of CPUT’s design faculty and his colleagues were amongst the

rst to hear about thesuccess of the WDC pilot and Icsid’s joint board decision to continue with the project.

In their capacity as design practitioners and educators, they saw the award as a primeopportunity for expanding global market access for local craft and design products

and creating jobs for their graduates through honing Cape Town’s design reputation

(interview, Snaddon, 15 February 2013). As Icsid’s board had already informallyindicated that it would strongly support a bid from a developing country, a group of

CPUT representatives decided to pitch the WDC idea to local government. However,

due to the fact that local government’s capacities were stretched to the limit at the be-

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260 L. Wenz, The local governance dynamics of international accolades

ginning of 2010 because of the looming FIFA World Cup, thus promising little chanceof CPUT’s initiative even being tabled in time for the bid’s submission deadline, theydecided to team up with the CTP (interview, M’Rithaa, 30 January 2012). Though

the CTP is also funded by local and provincial government and thus has to adhere to

certain bureaucratic processes in line with the Municipal Finance Management Act(No. 56 of 2003), its close relationships with the private sector, academia and the

media as well as its project-based and networked style of operating provide it with a

signicantly higher amount of political exibility. This makes it both an inuentialgovernmental intermediary and a public agenda-setter.

Regarding the WDC bid, a central gatekeeper for initiating the stakeholder dialogue

around design was the then director of Creative Cape Town. Tasked with consolidat-

ing the dispersed local creative economy networks, he saw the merit of the ‘design’discourse in terms of its possibility to break down what he and other experts conceived

of as the local creative economy’s inhibiting ‘silo mentality’. In addition, it offered

the opportunity to simultaneously push the envelope of local digital innovation and

information technology, a eld in which the CTP had started to cooperate activelywith provincial government through its ‘Cape Catalyst Projects’ (interview, Minty,

5 January 2011).10 In consequence, he backed CPUT’s idea to bid for WDC in a

joint presentation to the CPT’s board of directors. There, it fell on sympathetic ears:‘Because we were also very involved with the FIFA World Cup management… we

realised that Cape Town needs the next big thing. And that next big thing should be

around creativity and innovation’ (interview, Makalima-Ngewana, 21 February 2012).

This chapter proposes that the local governmental logic relating to the WDC isintrinsically linked to the dif cult urban legacy of FIFA’s World Cup in 2010. Thus,

it represents much more than a coincidental knock-on effect as it reveals a pattern

of institutional path-dependency, which in turn emphasises the need to consider the

temporal alongside the spatial scale in the unfolding of local urban politics (McCann2003). At the time, three main ‘lessons’ from the World Cup spoke for pursuing the

WDC project. The rst was related to the fact that during the run-up to the World

Cup, local government had faced severe civic criticism, ranging from the contestedlocation of the stadium to the erce prohibition of informal traders operating in public

spaces, and from the displacement of the urban poor to the resistance of the taxi driver

associations against the Integrated Rapid Transit transportation scheme (Pillay et al.

2009; Haferburg 2011; Steinbrink et al. 2011).11 Hence, the WDC bid was presented

as a communicative platform that on the one hand could be used to counter the high

level of post-tournament dejection, which was already wearily anticipated by gov-ernment, and on the other hand would be able to continue transmitting the positive

international image of Cape Town as a clean and safe ‘city that works’ (interview,

10 The project involved the establishment of an inner-city ‘Design and Innovation District’called ‘The Fringe’ within the area of the former District Six.

11 The geographical location of the stadium was one of the most pervasive and controversiallydebated questions during the entire World Cup planning period. For a detailed discussion ofthe local politics around Cape Town’s selection of venue sites see Swart and Bob (2009).

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Implications of local path-dependency for policy uptake 261

Platzky, 21 February 2012). A second lesson, connected to the physical legacy of theWorld Cup, was that the accolade would provide an – albeit preliminary – responseto tough questions being asked about the subsequent use and maintenance of the

costly event infrastructure such as the new stadium, which has to date not been able

to operate cost-effectively.12 In this regard, the WDC bid gave city of cials a ‘next big thing’, a project to point to whenever the discussion turned

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Urban Governance in Post Apartheid Cities

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