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Chris Heymans
about sustainability. For example, the national department responsible for water affairs has provided water and sanitation services and infrastructure to rural areas, while the national government also managed a parallel conditional grant for municipal infrastructure. All these grants fund specific projects. Although project-focused measures were necessary in 1994 to ensure speedy delivery, the difficulties in getting effective systems in place often seem related to national departments being too far removed from local areas to understand local demand for services. The project-based approach resulted in a lack of attention to sustainability considerations, such as the issue of who is responsible for maintaining infrastructure and the collection of user fees for such services. It has also led to poor coordination, where the spatial and delivery plans of provincial or local governments are often not followed. In this context, the systematic attempts to consolidate grants form a critical part of building an integrated approach, one that is targeted to specific issues, yet not fragmented—and in line with the overall vision that is so important.
Notes 1. Under apartheid, nine ethnically defined homelands or Bantustans were created as alternatives to giving black South Africans full political rights in the central political system. Initially, the ultimate apartheid vision was that all black people would reside in those areas, and that they would at most be temporary sojourners in “white South Africa,” where their labor was still needed. By the 1980s, demographic and economic realities and heightening political pressure led to a relaxation of laws that attempted to control the inflow of black people to major urban areas, but even then black people who did not even live in Bantustans were deemed their citizens by law and could not obtain South African citizenship rights. The Bantustans were given some form of self-government, and four were even declared independent states by the South African government, but this independence was never internationally recognized or accepted by the black majority in South Africa. All the Bantustans remained economically and fiscally dependent on the South African government. 2. Apartheid South Africa revolved around a series of racial definitions that—although awkward—are difficult to avoid when discussing local government in that era. Apart from distinguishing between white people and others, those who were not white were legally differentiated as “black” (African), “colored” (of mixed race), and Indian. 3. These boards were renamed development boards in 1983 and community services divisions in 1986. 4. One of the controversies about demarcation was the creation of local governments that stretched across the borders of more than one province. Following representations by identified stakeholders and members of the public, the boundaries of these “cross-border” municipalities were redrawn. The new boundaries came into effect with the March 2006 local government elections. In the process, the overall total of local governments was reduced to 283.
