Resource information
The townships of Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu (INK) are about 25km north of the Durban city centre. The area covers 9340ha of land, and is home to about 580,000 people (18 per cent of Durban’s population) in 115,136 households.
INK has one of the largest concentrations of low-income households in South Africa. In the mid-1990s a number of smaller local councils in the greater Durban area were amalgamated into a single metropolitan municipality, and the city was expanded to incorporate a number of townships. Because the political violence of the 1980s had been more intense in INK than in townships to the south of the city, it was relatively less developed. Almost 77 per cent of households earn less than R1600 per month, only 27 per cent of residents are employed and about 43 per cent of the people do not have formal houses. INK comprises 18 wards and is managed as a single entity by the eThekwini Municipality.
This study looks at the township re-planning project of in the INK townships and makes recommendations for efficiency. The KwaMashu Town Centre (KMTC) project began in 1999 as a node for economic development in INK. At the time of this study, INK was characterised by very high rates of unemployment, poverty and crime; low levels of formal education; a lack of adequate housing and basic services; low levels of access to public services; a lack of public space and recreation opportunities; and high levels of environmental degradation and pollution.
In 2001, national government launched the flagship Urban Renewal Programme (URP) to address infrastructure deficiencies and declining economies in areas characterised by widespread poverty and neglect. INK is one of eight targeted ‘poverty nodes’ in former townships of South Africa’s six metropolitan municipalities. The infrastructure investment is aimed at:
• improving the delivering of community facilities;
• maintaining existing infrastructure; managing informal trade;
• enhancing road and pedestrian safety through physical works and education;
• addressing service backlogs; supporting crime prevention through appropriate infrastructure design;
• implementing the municipal land-use management programme;
• attracting investment through integrated spatial planning supported by local area plans and precinct plans; and
•developing and implementing an environmental land use and transport management system.
The paper concludes with the following ‘lessons learnt’: Look for linkages, deal with land issues, take careful account of stakeholder interests, clarify institutional roles and responsibilities, ensure plans take physical constraints into account, link capital expenditure to social goals, link small business to large business and pay attention to good intergovernmental relations.
