The Townlands Social Housing Project in Marabastad, Tshwane, launched in March this year, is one of the biggest housing projects in the country. South Africa’s social, economic, spatial, financial and environmental challenges require us to be of one mind to build our urban areas together, say the writers. Picture: Jacques Naude / Independent Newspapers
By Michael Sutcliffe and Sue Bannister
In his Opening of Parliament speech, President Cyril Ramaphosa argued that as “an immediate priority, we will bring stability to governance in our metros and restore the delivery of services”.
He reflected on what needs to be done in eThekwini. Then he argued that “we will extend the same approach to other metropolitan cities that face serious challenges so that our cities can be engines of growth and dynamic centres of opportunity”. The intention is to “turn our country into a construction site”.
These are important and correct statements as throughout the world, the largest urban areas are the engines of growth. In some countries, there is only one city that dominates, while in South Africa we have more than 20 major and intermediate metropolitan areas.
Of course, the largest is the conurbation in Gauteng where it is often difficult to see where Johannesburg ends and Ekurhuleni or Tshwane begins. And if these areas get sick, their provinces and the rest of the country suffer.
South Africa is highly urbanised compared with most sub-Saharan African countries. Today, for example, well over 80 percent of our people live on less than 2 percent of the land area. However, the high densities do not mean all South Africans experience urban life in the same way that, say, New Yorkers do.
The effects of colonialism and the apartheid state are writ large in our cities, with a highly fragmented and unequal urban system in terms of economic opportunities, social justice and environmental sustainability.
Forced removals, return migration and the fact that black South Africans were historically considered as transient workers in urban areas, have created a fragmented space economy between and within urban areas.
For example, a township worker may spend R100 a day on transport, with a commuting time of between two and three hours. After a day of work, they return home to a neighbourhood that is, in many cases, under supplied with street lighting and without pavements, making their commute even more dangerous.
Most residents of former townships have lower access to health facilities, social services and other amenities compared to former white areas.
The Category A municipalities, often referred to as our metropolitan areas, are areas of major economic growth, hope and relative prosperity too. The size of the areas can be seen in the following statistics: the eight category A metropolitan municipalities have grown from about 6.2 million households to almost eight million between 2011 to 2022.
This means an additional 1.8 million households have all required the formal services of water, sanitation, electricity and so on. Importantly, in the eight areas, the number of informal households has declined from 11.2 million households to 8.5 million, although the Category A areas have some 60 percent of all informal households in South Africa.
Overall, the eight metros are home to 45 percent of all households in our country. There is no doubt they are major engines of growth, as reflected in statistics such as the Personal Income declared to Sars. We find 18 percent of all personal income tax assessed by Sars is from Johannesburg, followed by
Cape Town (13 percent), Tshwane (12 percent), Ekurhuleni (9 percent), eThekwini (8 percent) and the other three metros (around 8 percent), which means almost 70 percent of all personal tax assessed is in the eight areas.
However, it is in the same areas, though, that we find the greatest racial and income segregation, with increasingly gated enclaves of prosperity surrounded by high walls.
They contrast with informal settlements, mostly poorly managed and under served with basic services where residents seek to survive as cheaply as possible. Expectedly, then, at a municipal level, the eight areas constitute a major part of the municipal budgets in South Africa.
The total budgets of the eight areas constitute almost 60 percent of the total budgets of municipalities in the country, some R355 billion, compared with the remaining 249 municipalities sharing the remaining R261bn. The three Gauteng areas – Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni – are budgeted to spend a total of R183bn this year, followed by Cape Town (R72bn) and eThekwini (R60bn).
Worryingly, though, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni aim to spend only 7 percent of their budgets on capital works. Herein lies our challenge.
With the exception of Cape Town, the remaining seven Category A areas have had declining proportions of their budgets dedicated to capital expenditure and most have poor levels of expenditure on repairs and maintenance. They all have at least one financial trigger which, by law, requires some form of financial intervention.
There is no doubt that we must focus on infrastructure, but to do so we must improve competency levels at all three spheres of the government, we must fill vacancies with appropriately qualified people, and we must cut out the corruption which is found in all spheres of the government.
Other measures are also needed, including making land available, speeding up municipal processes, such as processing building plans and ensuring that there is no illegal interference in construction work.
We have much to be proud of in what we have done in the past 30 years, including our free basic services and human settlements programmes which are often cited internationally as best practices.
However, our challenges are not reducing, particularly with the climate variability we are experiencing, where stronger winds and rains are no longer exceptional events but ones that we must actively plan for.
It is imperative our urban planning ensures that we do not locate poorer and more vulnerable people in areas that are vulnerable to flooding and other climate dangers. We also have considerable work to do to ensure our emergency services can respond rapidly to emergencies and disasters in informal areas.
South African cities have, however, been innovative in mitigating climate change through taking measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We have played key leadership roles in the many global climate change initiatives.
Most importantly, our social, economic, spatial, financial and environmental challenges require us to be of one mind to build our urban areas together. In this regard, the continuing and residual effects of racism must be addressed. In most of our municipalities, the patterns of racial and income segregation have hardly changed after 30 years of democratic government.
We must develop new urban rules and regulations, with improved urban planning and design, but with the provision of developmental finance to ensure our plans get implemented. And, of course, we must deal decisively with corruption, particularly those who abuse public office at the expense of delivery.
* Michael Sutcliffe and Sue Bannister Directors of City Insight
** The views expressed in this article are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of The African
Related Topics: