Masters Degrees (School of Public Leadership)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/694

Browse

Browsing Masters Degrees (School of Public Leadership) by Subject "Activists, Human rights -- Cape Town (South Africa)"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The activist planning, transformation and complexity nexus : implications for the Atlantis Revitalisation Framework of 2012
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Manguwo, Liveson; Muller, J. I.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. School of Public Leadership.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : This case study explores a collaborative planning process that led to the formulation of the Atlantis Revitalisation Framework (ARF) of 2012. The study is based on a thematic content review and analysis of secondary data in the public sphere, personal notes and reflections that were collected during and after the policy framework was established. Atlantis was established in 1975 to accommodate the coloured community 45 km outside the City of Cape Town (CoCT) in line with apartheid planning policy of racial segregation. After losing state subsidies, the socioeconomic plight of Atlantis deteriorated markedly between 1994 and 2009 resulting in job losses and high unemployment. This economic decline triggered negative social issues, such as poverty, food insecurity, crime, gang activities, drug abuse and domestic violence. Multi-stakeholder agencies in Atlantis collectively initiated a rescue strategy to address the economic downturn that worsened during the 2008/9 Global Economic Recession. To clearly understand the nuances, actions, events and decisions that led to the establishment of the ARF, the study explores the potentially ‘transformative’ insights from complexity theory and activist modes of planning with a bias towards human-rights-based planning. These insights are then applied as lenses in the analysis of the ARF case study. To establish the ‘nexus’ meaning interconnectedness between activist planning, transformation and complexity, the study looks at the history of positivist planning systems and maps out the justifications and conditions used in its pervasive legitimation thereof. Using complexity theory as a lens, the study reviews the constraints and wicked problems that planning faces. It explores the intricate links tying open planning sub-systems into large networks that interact dynamically, often along non-linear routes. It also highlights the challenge of wicked problems and the global sustainable development poly-crisis. It demonstrates the difficulty of predicting future events; of dealing with vested interests and conflicts of values; of managing the complex interrelationships and interaction of decisions made at different scales, in different policy spheres, and at different points in time. These challenges expose the inability of traditional planning approaches to adequately respond to the growing needs and lived experiences of expanding urban populations, particularly those in the Global South, and specifically those that are marginalised and excluded. Using the concept of ‘transformation’, which entails greater sensitivity towards complexity, contextual reality and indeterminacy in the pursuit of quality engagements that are legitimate, epistemologically empowering, inclusive, transparent, and geared towards relationship building, the study proposes a rethink of planning practices in the Global South and in South Africa specifically. It argues that such a rethink requires a shift in the institutional and governance arrangements of the state and civil society. Using the transformative insights gleaned from activist modes of planning, the study outlines evaluative criteria that was used in the analysis of the Atlantis case study. The evaluative criteria revealed what the planning issues were, including their historical links to segregatory planning policies of the apartheid regime. It identified the geographic isolation of Atlantis as a negative factor inhibiting its ability to function in sync with the CoCT’s regional economy. These complex issues prompted an activist reaction from multiple local stakeholders. Through the Atlantis Socio-Economic (ASED) task team, they collectively initiated an adversarial planning process, highlighting the development of new institutional and governance configurations which challenged existing power relations and interests. Though not entirely transformative and critically reflective, the activist planning approach employed by ASED was forward-looking and adaptive. It involved multiple actors which transformed the existing governance systems and frameworks. A new governance regime called the Atlantis Stakeholder Assembly (ASA) was created as a vehicle through which planning issues were discussed. The ASA the newly established Inter-governmental Steering Committee (CoCT, Provincial Government of Western Cape (PGWC) and the National Government produced the final ARF. This policy framework led to the implementation of the Atlantis business rescue strategy, the establishment of the Green industrial hub, job training and reskilling of the local workforce, and access to industrial land being expedited. However, when the politically charged ASED task team was disbanded and replaced by the ASA some of the incentives for transformation, as pushed for by the activists, were diminished. The ASA lacked agency, political muscle and influence and it also lacked legislative recognition, as it had no decisive power to set the substantive agenda, timing, and debates regarding the developmental issues in Atlantis. This transition reversed the seemingly transformative governance reform championed by ASED that had the potential to ensure democratic accountability. The move allowed the technical stuff from the CoCT and PGWC to dominate the planning process and give direction to the ASA within the economic and political constraints of the CoCT.