How Urban Planning Shaped Cape Town: Ghosts of Apartheid
Introduction
Near the southernmost point of the African continent is the city of Cape town with startling natural beauty. However, the city, as well as the entire country of South Africa, is haunted by the ghosts of apartheid. Deep-rooted institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination have caused long-lasting scars on the landscape and urban growth of the city.
Cape town had been colonized by the Dutch, French, and the British multiple times until 1806 when the British re-colonized the city. Slaves were freed in 1834. The city eventually was decolonized in the mid 20th century, but the majority of non-whites continued to be governed by the minority whites. During this time is when racial segregation was institutionalized and the ideology of apartheid was introduced, eventually causing political unrest. South Africa’s first all-race, the democratic election happened in 1994, and the first black prime minister — Nelson Mandela was elected.
The colonial settlements in South Africa had a distinctive feature of segregation. The bubonic plague during the end of the 19th century drove the government to restrict non-whites from most urban spaces and kept them away from the urban core.
In the year 1923, an official policy of urban segregation was formed through the Natives Act. With the help of this Act, the local governing bodies began to set land aside for African migrant workers, which in turn empowered the authorities to restrict the migrant numbers, stabilizing the white ruling class. The minority ruling whites formed enclaves for themselves by containing the natives, monitoring and exploiting them for cheap labor.
Further restrictions on the movements and rights of people of color were placed when Afrikaner Nationalists (constituting whites) took control of the country in 1961. Additional Acts like Group Areas Act and new amendments to the Natives Act were made in favor of the governing institutions, reinforcing the racially divided settlements.
In Cape Town, non-whites were razed from their land and were forced to settle in less desirable sites on the edge of cities. Few areas were dedicated for the non-whites to move to, with no infrastructure and little means to build any housing for themselves. The figure shows a model of apartheid city.
The city planning was extremely repressive but found to be an effective system for political control until the unrest amongst the people began. This mechanism created a framework for economic expansion, with race and class built into the social structure. Urban apartheid caused a concentration of socio-economic resources in the white enclaves and people of color were extruded to the peripheries creating a racial and class map in the early 1970s. However, the racial city plan became increasingly problematic in the late 1970s, due to economic inefficiency and a growing mobilization against the apartheid. Hundreds and thousands of excluded blacks started resisting and in further decades led to their victory in 1994.
The Cape metropolitan area is currently growing at the rate of 2% per year. A large influx continues to be the rural-urban migrants moving in as the working class. A severe housing shortage is witnessed even though the city has the largest formal housing in South Africa, leaving a large number of migrants to live in informal shacks and houses.
According to Doug Saunders, rural-urban migration is currently a common phenomenon in all countries of the global south and these informal settlements need to be considered as arrival cities. A combination of this and the historical informal settlements demand keen attention to augment these neighborhoods. Rather than dismissing these areas as changeless entities, they should be considered as an entry mechanism for an urban establishment. These migrants should be facilitated enough, to buy a house, start small businesses, get access to higher education, and finally permanent employment. We should be able to provide them by upgrading streets, plumbing, housing, and transit to help create them an exit strategy out of this arrival city and to establish themselves in the city.
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Hayhurst, Ryan. Cape Town: A City Of Contrasts. UC Alagary, https://www.ucalgary.ca/ev/designresearch/projects/Evds723/capetown.pdf. Accessed 2 Apr. 2021.
Hindson, Doug. The Apartheid City : Construction, Decline and Reconstruction. University of Durban-Westville, https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers11-10/010005820.pdf. Accessed 2 Apr. 2021.
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