The Apartheid City and Beyond

This book explains how apartheid changed South Africa's cities, how people responded to regain some control over urban life, and how the forces of urbanization held back under apartheid will affect the post-apartheid era.
A study of apartheid and the changes which have taken place in South Africa since 1981. The author argues that vested interests and ideologies existing behind the pattern of property ownership survive the abolition of apartheid laws and that beyond race, class and ethnicity continue to divide urban life. Apartheid as legislated racial separation substantially changed the South African urban scene. Race "group areas" remodelled the cities, while the creation of "homelands" mini-states and the "pass laws" controlling population migration constrained urbanization itself. In the mid-1980s the old system - having proved economically inefficient and politically divisive - was replaced by a new policy of "orderly urbanization". This sought to accelerate industrialization and cultural change by relaxing the constraints on urbanization imposed by state planning. The result was further political instability and quarter of the black (or African) population housed in shanty towns. Negotiations between the Nationalist government and the African National Congress are working towards the end of the old apartheid system. Yet the negation of apartheid is only the beginning of the creation of a new