RECONSTRUCTION AND POSTDEVELOPMENTALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA: THE CASE OF AN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT IN PIETERMARITZBURG-MSUNDUZI (1990–1995)

ABSTRACT

The spontaneous mushrooming of informal settlements has been a prominent feature of the urban built environment in South Africa in the 1990s. The state and civil society adopted divergent responses to the establishment and growth of these settlements. This paper examines, in a case study of the Otto's Bluff Road informal settlement in Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi, the unrelenting pressure civil society and extraparliamentary organizations exerted on the apartheid local state to abandon its repressive approach towards these settlements. It contrasts, from the postdevelopmentalism theoretical and realist methodological perspectives, the apartheid local state's approach with the more flexible and accommodative policies and initiatives adopted by the Greater Pietermaritzburg Local Government Forum and the Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi Transitional Local Council during South Africa's recent political transition. The paper highlights the role of South Africa's “new commons” to emancipate themselves from the shackles of apartheid; terminate privilege, insecurity and discrimination; and regenerate people's spaces in the pursuit of increased equality, enhanced opportunity and freedom from want.