Cape Town

On 28 May 2008, the Cape Town Partnership Company Executive Officers’s newsletter reported on an ‘Interfaith ceremony at Prestwich Place [sic]’ to ‘consecrate’ a new ossuary building recently completed in Cape Town’s central business district. The announcement placed the Ossuary alongside other Partnership initiates and events such as the Harvest Festival, the Creative Cape Town initiative, and the upgrading of the Cape Town Station and the Grand Parade managed through the Partnership and the City Improvement District. The building of the Ossuary is intended to memorialise and bring closure to the contestations over the re-emergence of burial spaces in the city that have taken place in Cape Town since 2004. Presented as a successful ‘partnership’ between the Prestwich Place Project Committee, the City of Cape Town, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, the District Six Museum and Heritage Western Cape, this symbolic act of closure has been hailed a breakthrough in terms of heritage practice by practitioners and city officials alike. In this paper we visit the space of the Ossuary and its associated exhibition in the city, and reflect on the relationship between life space and burial space in Cape Town. Following the official path of the exhibition we pause to attach our own notes – a series of fragmentary interventions which trouble the smooth surface of containment. We use the experience of walking to reflect on the architecture of closure.

South Africa failing people displaced by xenophobia riots

Queering Hip-Hop, Queering the City: Dope Saint Jude’s Transformative Politics

In anti-apartheid South Africa, performance culture was dominated by one institution: the Market Theatre. Opening in June 1976, just before the Soweto uprising, the Market provided a venue for plays that expressed the urgency of the anti-apartheid struggle. While other, shorter-lived theatres — from the Space in Cape Town (1972–81) to black institutions in or near Johannesburg such as FUBA (Federated Union of Black Arts) or Soyikwa (honoring playwright Wole Soyinka) — staged critical drama, it was the Market that provided space, support, and marketing for one of apartheid’s most visible exports: anti-apartheid protest theatre. Although some lamented the packaging of protest as ‘theatre for export’ in plays like Sarafina (1986) that flattered overseas spectators’ sense of their own political correctness (see Mofokeng, 1996), all agree that at its best, in plays from Survival (1976), to Woza Albert (1981), to Born in the RSA, and Have you seen Zandile? (both 1986), anti-apartheid theatre bore witness to both the atrocities of, and the resistance to, apartheid. As the primary venue for this genre of performance, the Market offered not only a stage but also a safe haven for performers whose work and whose very selves might have otherwise been banned or harassed by the apartheid state.

Lefebvre's Modernities: Informality, Planning and Space in Cape Town

The use of leisure and tourism to re-image and redevelop cities has been interpreted as a mechanism for attracting capital and people. In a period of intense inter-place competition and urban entrepreneurialism, whole built environments become centerpieces of urban spectacle and display. Waterfront developments have become emblematic in this regard. Over the past two decades the redevelopment of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (V&AW) in Cape Town has been transformed from ‘port’ to ‘playground’ and is internationally acknowledged as one of the most successful of these developments. This redevelopment has, as has been the case with numerous other waterfront developments, not been uncontroversial. New tensions and conflicts have arisen over the use, meaning, and ownership of this space. The acquisition of the waterfront by a consortium of London- and Dubai-based property developers in 2006 has renewed concerns about the ‘plasticization’ of the waterfront and signals the symbolic start of a new phase in this waterfront’s development trajectory. The paper tracks the development of the V&AW since its inception in the late 1980s and argues that general critiques of waterfront developments sit uneasily in the Cape Town context. It is also suggested that these developments can fulfil a very significant and positive role for developing world cities.

Conceptually grounded, integrated, city-scale and comparative studies remain rare and are based mostly on meta-reviews of the literature or broad surveys. Conversely, debates about the limitations of incremental or transitional change and exhortations towards more ambitious processes of system or transformative changes are rarely grounded in adequate empirical analysis. Accordingly, this paper examines city-scale plans and actions in order to throw light on these issues in a carefully contextualised Global South–North comparison between Cape Town, South Africa, and Greater Manchester, UK. Cape Town has a considerable pedigree of citywide climate policy and action but achieving cross-departmental integration remains a key challenge, along with operationalisation and monitoring. Greater Manchester has abundant climate ambitions to become a leading European green city, but recent innovative policy processes revealed a lack of capacity and in-house expertise. The comparative analysis therefore focuses on capacity constraints hampering fulfilment of progressive city aspirations that engage with global agendas, and on how they use innovative planning and implementation processes and different forms of knowledge to address integrative or cross-cutting issues, as well as on their relative success to date in doing so in the face of different extents of inequality and power asymmetry. <em><strong>Policy relevance</strong></em> A comparative analysis of city-wide climate policy initiatives provides four insights that are highly relevant for policymakers. First, the political–institutional context in which local climate policy is designed invariably shapes the policy process, making it imperative to consider redesigning the ‘multilevel governance’ structures between the local governments that ‘hold the problem’ of climate change with the tools required to address the root causes. Second, policymakers need to grapple with and negotiate across the conflicting rationalities held by different professionals and stakeholders to bring together and integrate different types of knowledge into a comprehensive perspective. Third, local governments must find ways to address the underlying challenge of institutional inertia to embrace more ambitious, transformative policy agendas, moving away from incrementalist approaches. Finally, local governments should integrate debates on socio-spatial fairness and justice with climate policy, recognising the interdependencies between these agendas.

The interaction of the prosecutor’s office with public authorities is one of the most important areas of prosecutorial activity. At the same time, most scientific works devoted to similar topics lack a comprehensive analysis of the problems of legal regulation of forms of interaction between prosecutorial authorities and local government bodies. Within the framework of this article, using general scientific methods (comparison, analysis and synthesis) and private scientific methods (formal legal method and method of interpretation of legal norms), certain provisions are considered that determine the implementation of forms of interaction between prosecutors and local governments. The researcher conducted an analysis of the legal nature of the forms of interaction between the prosecutor’s office and local government bodies, proposed an original approach to identifying the essence of direct and indirect substitution of the powers of local government bodies in the field of rule-making by the prosecutor’s office, and identified a number of problems associated with the implementation of interaction between these subjects of legal relations. The indicated problems include violation of the principle of independence of prosecutorial supervision when the prosecutor exercises the right of rule-making initiative in a representative body of local government; the inadmissibility of the substitution of the powers of local government bodies by prosecutorial bodies when participating in law-making activities; the adoption by a local government body of municipal legal acts submitted by the prosecutorial body in an unchanged form. It is proposed to improve the legal approach aimed at developing the limits of interaction between prosecutorial bodies and local government bodies, including in terms of establishing specific criteria that determine the admissibility of submitting a draft municipal legal act to the competent local government body, which will ultimately ensure the formation of an optimal model of their interaction.

Tourism is often promoted as an economic cure-all in the developing world. The 1990s have however witnessed a growing realisation that tourism offers anything but ‘quick fix’ solutions. Of particular importance in the context of this article, are the debates around how traditional cultures are marketed and commodified; debates which have particular relevance to South Africa in the post apartheid era. There exists a clear need to look beyond the obvious economic networks associated with the tourism industry to a deeper understanding of the issues of power, access and identity. To better understand the changes occurring within tourism in South Africa, this paper firstly examines the challenges of transforming tourism institutions to ensure black participation and empowerment. Thereafter the paper explores issues related to the representation of black culture and history in the heritage tourism industry. Focusing on two key examples, namely Kagga Kama in the Cederberg and the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in the Cape Town docklands, the authors assess some of the challenges associated with the development of a more responsible and socially sensitive tourism industry in South Africa. Finally, the article examines the opportunities and constraints to tourism development in Cape Town's townships, questioning whether and how tourism can be practised in these areas to ensure that benefits reach locals without negatively impacting on their natural and cultural heritage.

Résumé Signes des temps : le Victoria and Alfred Waterfront entre tourisme et histoire pour le public. — Cet article étudie les modifications apportées au patrimoine urbain de Cape Town au cours du XXe siècle et examine en particulier les images du passé de cette ville à travers son lieu le plus touristique, le Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. Les auteurs décrivent ensuite leur tentative, avec d'autres membres du Cape Town History Project, d'en présenter une image différente, en plaçant, en des lieux précis, des panneaux explicatifs évoquant l'histoire du site. Cette démarche, dans le contexte du processus de démocratisation de l'Afrique du Sud, a permis d'atténuer les divergences existant entre les représentations du public, des universitaires et des professionnels.

Objective: This paper aims to focus on grassroots democracy in India and also to find out the role local self-government for the development of rural India and its challenges to govern. Methods: The methodological path taken by using the secondary based data to find out the local government system and governance in India. The method approach was qualitative descriptive research. Results and conclusion: The Panchayati Raj system of local self-government was introduced by the 73rd Amendment of the Constitution of India which influenced the village life extensively as one of the most important units of democratic decentralization. Seventy-third Constitutional Amendment Act, ‘Empowering People for Prosperity´, brings out a significant change in the attitude, behavior and performance of the rustic folk in India. There are more than 250,000 local government bodies across India with nearly 3.1 million elected representatives. This paper reveals forward states provide good governance through the local government in the core areas of development with execution of plans in rural India and on the other hand, backward states are lack in governance due to nature the corruption laden politics exist in those states. Implication of the research: This study sums up with the significance of grassroots democracy and its role in the development of rural India and at the same time to highlights the hurdle in the governance ecosystem of local governments in rural India. Originality/value: The value of this study lies in its focus on a relatively aspect of grassroots governance system in India. It addresses a significant gap in the current literature, providing fresh insights into governance system in rural India and the strengthen the grassroots democracy.

This paper explores ideas about health and illness held by six children who live in the Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area in Cape Town, South Africa. The research shows that solutions to illness and health problems held by low-income populations are critically shaped by various characteristics of society — the surrounding neighbourhood, the family and the experience of the individual child. This contests current policy assumptions that solutions to wellness are not located within the lived experience of local populations. The findings are part of continued efforts to investigate how health is negotiated in low-income areas, what challenges people face and how they overcome such challenges. The research discusses ideas of health embodiment in relation to both the socio-economic and natural environment, and illustrates the impact that poor housing-quality and access to health care services have on health and ideas of health and illness.

This study examines social media use for public engagement during the Cape Town water crisis in South Africa. The study applies technology affordance and attribution theories to explore social media features (affordances) utilised by local authorities and the public, meanings embedded in the social media posts and the attributions of the water crisis cause among the actors. Data gathering and analysis followed mixed methods. Qualitative data were gathered using key informant interviews and netnography (data scrapping on Twitter) while a household survey (n= 96) was conducted to obtain quantitative data. The university research committee and City of Cape Town issued ethical clearances. During the water crisis, metavoicing, persistent engagement and visibility emerged as social media affordances. Social media posts reflected societal dynamics and attributed the crisis as external, unstable, and controllable. These findings are critical towards handling future crises and suggest collaborative efforts as the desirable action.

Living sustainably entails fulfilling Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The need for leisure and recreation is one of the most essential higher-order needs, and local authorities can meet these needs through park delivery. The existing park literature in South Africa is limited in scope and dates back to the apartheid era, with little evidence pertaining to community neighbourhood park (CNP) use in townships. The aim of this paper is to determine the perceptions, preferences, needs and uses of CNPs in five black townships in Cape Town. Findings indicate that townships have few CNPs, which therefore require travelling greater distances by public transport for access. Due to a lack of private garden space, respondents visit CNPs regularly and spend more time there, participating in either active or passive recreation. The main concerns about CNPs include safety and maintenance, and a lack of CNP facilities. These concerns extend to the type of facilities that respondents want to develop in CNPs, to create their ideal setting.

Adequate provision of affordable human settlements is a huge challenge in South Africa since its independence. This paper investigates the effects of the cost increase of building materials on affordable housing delivery in South Africa. With potential solutions for cost minimisation of building materials, with the aim of achieving affordable housing delivery in South Africa are provided. This study uses a sequential mixed methods approach, wherein surveys were conducted among the construction professionals (project managers, site managers architects, site engineers, quantity surveyors, contractors, building materials suppliers, and government workers) in the construction industry within Cape Town, South Africa, who were considered as the research participants. The qualitative data obtained from the survey exercise were analysed using content analysis, while the quantitative data were analysed using a descriptive statistical technique on SPSS. The findings attained show fluctuation in construction cost and a rise in maintenance cost (caused by poor workmanship) as significant effects in the cost increase of building materials for affordable housing delivery. Adequate application of the recommendations given in this study will minimise the effects of high cost of building materials and enhance affordable housing delivery. Appropriate handling of the findings given in this study will reduce the effects of the high cost of building materials and augment timely delivery of affordable housing and stakeholders’ satisfaction.