The lingering environmental impact of repressive governance: The environmental legacy of the apartheid era for the new South Africa

Abstract

This article aims to explore the historical link between contemporary environmental problems and the environmental, economic and political policies of the apartheid government. The analysis draws on an examination of the detrimental environmental impacts of the apartheid era and how international isolation impacted on governmental environmental management in the country, before turning attention to the way in which the ANC government has managed the South African natural and human environments in the period after 1994. This article shows that despite many important new developments since 1994, that there are high levels of continuity between the environmental management practices of the old and the new regimes. This state of affairs negatively impacts on the ability of the ANC government to provide every South African citizen with the clean and safe environmental guaranteed to all within the 1996 Bill of Rights.

Notes

1. Jan Giliomee Private Document Collection (JGPDC, Stellenbosch, South Africa), Habitat Council: C. van Note, Statement on US enforcement of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, 14 July 1988, p10–12.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phia Steyn

Phia Steyn teaches African environmental history in the Department of History at the University of Stirling. Her research interests are twofold, namely the environmental impact of multinational oil production in ethnic minority territories in the African and Latin American tropics, and an environmental interpretation of the apartheid South Africa. She is currently doing research for an environmental history of apartheid South Africa (1948–1994).