The survival of apartheid's last town council in Groblersdal, South Africa

Abstract

The reconfiguration of South Africa's internal territorial spaces after 1990 was a logical outcome of the need to undo the effects of decades of territorial dismemberment under apartheid. In spite of the spatial reordering of areas which were controlled and administered by town councils established during apartheid, the Town Council of Groblersdal and its area of jurisdiction have remained unchanged up to the time of writing. This article attempts to explain and analyse the survival of the town council of Groblersdal in the Northern Province. It argues that the town council used the vacuum created by the provincial boundary dispute between Mpumalanga and the Northern Province to maintain the status quo in spite of legal struggles to determine its political future.

Notes

Lecture, Department of Geography, University of the North. The author gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Canon Collins Educational Trust for Southern Africa.