Three steps forward, two steps back: ideology & urban ecology in South Africa

Environmental discourse in South Africa has undergone dramatic change in the 1990s. Since the unbanning of the ANC and other anti‐apartheid organizations there has been an important re‐conceptualization of environmental issues and a rapid politicization of environmental debates. Organizations like the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF) have made the links between poverty and ecology an environmental priority in the country and important gains have been made on a wide range of environmental fronts. Environmental debates in South Africa have shifted from an historically racist and exclusionary discourse to one in which the definition of ‘the environment’ has expanded to include the working and living environments of black South Africans. This has had a profound impact on the way that environmental policy is prioritized and developed in the country and has contributed to a strong, and growing, environmental justice movement in the country. The first half of this article examines this shift in environmental discourse by looking briefly at the history of environmental debates in the country and at changes in environmental legislation and policy‐making procedures. The second half is a critical analysis of these environmental reforms ‐specifically as they relate to urban poverty. The delivery of basic services like sewerage and sanitation is arguably the single most important environmental concern in the country ‐ by virtue of the fact that it directly affects the largest number of people ‐ but it is unclear whether current urban upgrading initiatives are going to address this problem in an environmentally just and sustainable manner. It is argued that the interests of large scale capital and the propertied classes in South Africa continue to fundamentally shape ‐ and limit ‐ the environmental policy choices available to the ANC government. Environmental conditions in South African cities will gradually improve over the next five to ten years, but in a way that is intended to benefit urban capital and surreptitiously off‐loads the costs of urban upgrading onto the urban poor themselves.