Abstract

The glory years of transformation after the 1994 democratic elections were underpinned by hope, a vestigial neo-liberal agenda arising from years of protest against the previous nationalist government, and most, importantly, freedom for the greater proportion of South Africans. However, the subsequent years did not bode well for urban centres in the country which, not surprisingly had been mothballed in an imported, one-dimensional paradigm, following the intrinsic formats of their European progenitors. They became the realm of the mini-bus taxi, a place of aggregation and dispersal, integrated trade and at the same time did not accede to the habitual understandings of public space.

This paper considers that, perhaps this was not so much a perpetuated and habitual practise reinforced by exclusionary legislations, but one which was fundamentally situated in completely different concepts of land and access to land as experienced by the aboriginal inhabitants, the Southern Nguni in particular, and the settlers from a diversity of origins in Europe and Asia. Focusing on KwaZulu-Natal, on the eastern seaboard of the country, this paper will draw on ethnographic and oral sources, in addition to legal frameworks, to understand why an inclusive rationale for city planning needs to be at the core of understanding urban centres in the 21st century.