Social and Environmental Justice in South African Cities: Including ‘Invisible Stakeholders’ in Environmental Assessment Procedures

Abstract

In South Africa an intensive reform process to democratize policy, legislation and related institutions in the country commenced after the first democratic elections in 1994. While environmental law reform includes active public participation and equity principles, it is proposed in this paper that ecological modernization dominates current environmental assessment practice. This paper presents a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) of a proposed landfill on the periphery of Durban, where large informal settlements and peri-urban areas exist as a relic of apartheid planning. The methodology of the SIA was explicitly designed within a framework of social justice to include poor and marginalized people, who remain excluded from environmental decision making despite the promise of democratic equality. The study claims to deepen democratic practice by demonstrating that alternative methodologies can be designed to include the interests of ‘invisible stakeholders’ in environmental assessments despite the dominance of ecological modernization in the implementation of environmental law and policy.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank students of the Geography Division of the then School of Life and Environmental Science at the University of Natal for undertaking the field work for this project, Lombard and Associates for their assistance and co-operation, and the anonymous referees who provided many interesting and thought provoking comments. Sappi Ltd is thanked for supporting Catherine Oelofse's post at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Notes

At the time of the study, the Durban Metropolitan Area was divided into six sub-structures, one of which was the North Zone in which the study area was located. In December 2000 the boundaries of the DMA were expanded as part of the national process of municipal boundary demarcation. The term ‘DMA’ will be used here to denote the former city boundary as the Social Impact Assessment process took place in this context where the location of stakeholders ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the then city boundary influenced their interests in the process. The district lying outside the DMA boundary in the North Zone was the Ilembe Regional Council Area where the traditional authority areas canvassed in the case study were located. Both areas now lie within the eThekweni Municipality. For the purposes of this paper the boundaries prior to 2000 and the related responsible authorities will be referred to.

The term ‘black’ is used to refer to Africans, coloureds and Asians due to their common oppression under apartheid. Although it is acknowledged that apartheid-era racial classifications are social constructs, these classifications are adopted as they remain an important part of contemporary political analysis.

During the apartheid era from the 1970s the policy of separate development resulted in the creation on geographically separate ‘homelands’ for the different African ethnic groups of South Africa with the goal of removing Africans to these areas from the rest of ‘white’ South Africa. These areas were systematically neglected and underdeveloped.

The EIA included geotechnical, social, visual, odour and planning specialist reports.

Some of South Africa's large metropolitan areas have been expanded to include areas under traditional authority where these areas are functionally linked to the metropolitan economic fabric. In these and all other communally owned traditional authority areas, traditional authority is vested in the nkosi (chief), whose territory is divided into wards, which are controlled by indunas (headmen). In addition, as part of the new representative democracy there are elected councillors for these areas who are accountable to the electorate and responsible for representing the residents of their wards as they hold seats on the local municipal councils. These councils are responsible for service provision. There is thus a dual system of governance in these areas.

Now the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The role of SIA as a development tool to promote developmental local government is presented in Scott & Oelofse (2001).