FROM APARTHEID APOLOGISM TO POST-APARTHEID NEO-LIBERALISM: PARADIGM SHIFTS IN SOUTH AFRICAN URBAN GEOGRAPHY

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an overview and review of trends in South African urban geography. The paper will reveal that until recently, the Eurocentric dominance was very evident in urban geography. Initially the sub-discipline served to legitimate the apartheid status quo. In the 1980s a new generation of radical scholars began to challenge the Eurocentric hegemony, calling for de-colonisation and the development of an indigenous approach to geography. By the early 1990s urban geographers were contributing to reconstruction, development and planning in a non-racial democracy. Many urban researchers became policy makers and consultants to the government and this inevitably led to a decline in critical scholarship At the turn of the century a new breed of critical scholars were challenging the neoliberal urban strategies in the fledgling democracy.