Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001
COPING WITH INFORMALITY AND ILLEGALITY
IN HUMAN SETTLEMENTS IN DEVELOPING CITIES
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ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001
COPING WITH INFORMALITY AND ILLEGALITY
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Thomas Mogale
- Download the draft paper in *.rtf format
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South African democracy promises the resolution of many disabilities faced by those who have suffered under previous regimes. Since 1994 tremendous changes have taken place in many aspects of South African life. There can be little doubt that there have been enormous enhancements of citizenship for the great majority, and that in many cases, access to some basic services has also improved. For example, hundreds of thousands of households have benefited from the distribution of national subsidy funds, mostly through private developers, resulting in the construction of a million new houses - however limited the resource might appear to wealthier observers.
Yet, as in so many other countries, difficult problems remain. Among those is the question of insecurity of residential tenure coupled, often, with poor housing conditions. Every South African settlement contains complex tenure patterns. Whilst some residents enjoy exceedingly secure tenure, backed by survey, subdivision under law, registration of title and elaborate planning, many do not. One reason why security remains elusive for so many is that the terrain changes continuously and sometimes dangerously.
The largest cities, mostly the 'metros' of South African local government parlance, contain most obviously this range. From the centre of a large place like Durban, with something above 3 million people in the area, where mostly formal tenure arrangements hold sway (interrupted by an occasional informal 'favela' type settlement), the complexities of life at the urban fringe are almost unimaginable. At distances of, say, 20 kilometres from the city centre, or more, formal (old and new), informal (renting, subdivision and strong arm) as well as customary (that is, via chiefly allocation) forms of tenure are often inextricably intertwined. And, in the settlements of such urban peripheries, what constitutes urban as opposed to rural life can also be impossible to distinguish with any useful resonance.
More moderately sized cities, like Nelspruit and Pietersburg, the capitals of two of the nine provinces, present many similar phenomena. Here, in sometimes dispersed urban environments with several hundred thousand people, however, the spatial separations resulting from apartheid can be more severe, with urban economic space divided by swathes of rural territory clearly separating the more established towns and centres from segregated formal 'townships', informal settlements, and traditionally-run areas. As one moves out towards the outlying settlements which make up these urban-centred complexes, similar questions present themselves, but the environment becomes, if anything, particularly confusing if one seeks to understand it through categories of urban and rural. Whether the issues which confront residents and aspirant residents as they seek secure residential space are really the same as those confronting metro residents, or different; whether the ways forward should or could be the same or different; and how much (and how rapidly) those issues are changing, are the questions posed in the research project, funded under a Franco-South African scientific co-operation agreement.
The brief for this paper is to examine tenure security and tenancy practices in some of South Africa's informal urban areas and thereby gain understanding of its interactions and relationship with formal settlement patterns within changing frameworks. Residential tenure security in South African informal settlements is often problematic, and depends on the interaction of the formal and informal tenure systems on the ground. Problems with tenure security have very large implications for development and democracy as well as for crime and personal safety. Currently, the degree of tenure security which residents enjoy to remain on the land on which they live is determined by complex interactions between practices which have origins in different 'systems'. Preliminary observations would seem to suggest unsettling uncertainties around whether residents in what appear to be mainly 'informal' or 'customary' settlements are making significant gains on tenure security, or are finding their positions increasingly becoming more difficult. Further, it is not clear how 'formal' arrangements in various locations identified for study are affecting security - either to the benefit or the disadvantage of residents.
What is clear, though, is that the advent of democratisation in South Africa exerts significant impacts on tenancy patterns and security of tenure on settlement patterns inherited from the past. The removal of influx control measures and enshrining of right of movement for all South Africans has opened up opportunities for people to relocate and settle freely. The upshot is that large populations driven more by economic necessity have relocated into settlements designed for smaller populations exerting pressure far beyond what existing infrastructure and services levels can carry. Hence, the paper' examination of these shifting relationships between customary, informal and formal systems which do or do not secure residential land tenure . Implicit in the above is the supposition that major changes are occurring in the relationships between these systems leading to new settlement patterns, and that they are having diverse effects on individual and in some cases collective tenure security.
The paper will mainly focus on the articulation of the different systems, the overlap and integration of customary, informal and formal practices is, however, at the core. We furthermore are interested to learn whether and the extent to which new formal processes are succeeding or failing to grapple with the complexity of customary and informal practices and how these impact on the prospects for tenure security.
Emphasis will be placed on:
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net