Fixing Metropolitan Areas is a Non-Negotiable to make Growth Trajectory a Reality
Dr. Michael Sutcliffe and Ms. Sue Bannister, Directors: City Insight (Pty) Ltd
Presidential Speech
In his Opening of Parliament speech, President Ramaphosa argued strongly that as “an immediate priority, we will bring stability to governance in our metros and restore the delivery of services.” He reflected on what needs to be done in eThekwini and then argued that “we will extend the same approach to other metropolitan cities that face serious challenges so that our cities can be engines of growth and dynamic centres of opportunity” and the intention is to “turn our country into a construction site.”
Fixing Metropolitan Areas, Urban areas – engines of growth
These are important and correct statements as throughout the world the largest urban areas are the engines of growth. In some countries, there is only one city that dominates, whilst in South Africa we have over 20 major and intermediate metropolitan areas. Of course, the largest is the conurbation in Gauteng where it is often difficult to see where Johannesburg ends and Ekurhuleni or Tshwane begin. And if these areas get sick, their provinces and the rest of the country suffer.
South African Urbanisation
South Africa is highly urbanised compared with most sub-Saharan African countries. Today, for example, well over 80% of all of our people live on less than 2% of the land area. But these high densities do not mean all South Africans experience urban life in the same way that say New Yorkers do. The effects of colonialism and the apartheid state are still writ large in our cities with a highly fragmented and unequal urban system in terms of economic opportunities, social justice and environmental sustainability.
Forced removals, return migration and the fact that African South Africans were historically considered as transient workers in urban areas, has created a highly fragmented space economy between and within urban areas. For example, a township worker may spend R100 a day on transport, with a commuting time of between two and three hours. After a day of work, they return home to a neighbourhood that is in many cases under-supplied with street lighting and without pavements, making their commute even more dangerous. Most residents of former township areas still have lower access to health facilities, social services and other amenities compared to former white areas.
Fixing Metropolitan Areas: Category A municipalities
The Category A municipalities (often referred to as our metropolitan areas) are areas of major economic growth, hope and relative prosperity too. The size of these areas can be seen in the following statistics: the eight category A metropolitan municipalities have grown from around 6.2 million households to almost eight million households between 2011 to 2022. This means an additional 1.8 million households have all required formal services of water, sanitation, electricity, etc. Importantly, in these eight areas, the number of informal households has declined from 11.2 million households to 8.5 million households, although these Category A areas still have some 60% of all informal households in South Africa.
Overall these eight metros are home to 45% of all households in our country.
Engines of Growth
There is no doubt they are major engines of growth, as reflected in statistics such as the Personal Income declared to SARS. We find 18% of all personal income tax assessed by SARS is from Johannesburg, followed by Cape Town (13%), Tshwane (12%), Ekurhuleni (9%), eThekwini (8%), and the other three metros around 8%, which means almost 70% of all personal tax assessed is in these eight areas.
Racial and income segregation
However, it is in these same areas, though, that we find the greatest racial and income segregation, with increasingly gated enclaves of prosperity surrounded by high walls. These contrast with informal settlements, mostly poorly managed and underserved with basic services where residents seek to survive as cheaply as possible
Fixing Metrpolitan Areas and Budgeted Spend
Expectedly, then, at a municipal level, these eight areas constitute a major part of the municipal budgets in South Africa. Total budgets of these eight areas constitute almost 60% of the total budgets of municipalities in South Africa, some R355 billion, compared with the remaining 249 municipalities sharing the remaining R261 billion. The three Gauteng areas (JHB/TSH/EKU) are budgeted to spend a total of R183 billion this year, followed by Cape Town (R72 billion) and eThekwini (R60 billion).
Worryingly, though, Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni aim to spend only 7% of their budgets on capital works. Herein lies our challenge. With the exception of Cape Town, the remaining seven Category A areas have had declining proportions of their budgets dedicated to capital expenditure and most have very poor levels of expenditure on repairs and maintenance. They all have at least 1 financial trigger which by law requires some form of financial intervention.
Focus on infrastructure
There is no doubt that we must focus on infrastructure, but to do so we must improve competency levels at all three spheres of government, we must fill vacancies with appropriately qualified people, and we must cut out the corruption which is found in all spheres of government. Other measures are also needed, including making land available, speeding up municipal processes, such as processing building plans and ensuring that there is no illegal interference in construction work.
We have a lot to be proud of in what we have done in the past 30 years, including our Free Basic Services and Human Settlements programmes which are often cited internationally as best practices. But our challenges are not reducing, particularly with the climate variability we are now experiencing, where stronger winds and rains are no longer exceptional events but ones which we must actively plan for. It is imperative our urban planning ensures that we do not locate poorer and more vulnerable people in areas that are vulnerable to flooding and other climate dangers. We also have considerable work to do to ensure our emergency services are able to respond rapidly to emergencies and disasters in informal areas. South African cities have, however, been very innovative in mitigating climate change by taking measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We have played key leadership roles in the many global climate change initiatives.
Most importantly is that our social, economic, spatial, financial and environmental challenges require of us a mindset that gets us all building our urban areas together. In this regard, the continuing and residual effects of racism must be addressed. In most of our municipalities the patterns of racial and income segregation have hardly changed after twenty years of democratic government.
We must develop new urban rules and regulations, with improved urban planning and design, but with the provision of developmental finance to ensure our plans get implemented. And of course, we must deal decisively with corruption, particularly those who abuse public office at the expense of delivery.