Rethink land use, cities told

MIGRANTS who flock to South Africa’s cities in search of jobs and better economic prospects end up living in squalid conditions in informal settlements across the country.

They plunge further into poverty than before they headed to these cities, largely because local government lacks systems to integrate them into cities.

This is according to Parks Tau, the president of the South African Local Government Association, who addressed dialogues on migration and urbanisation held by United Cities and Local Governments, a global body for local governments, at Unisa’s Muckleneuk campus week.

Tau said informal settlements ostracised people from benefiting from services. “These are locations where there is no civic or social infrastructure such as supportive transport arteries as intended with the Corridors of Freedom programme.”

The programme was introduced during Tau’s mayorship in the City of Joburg and is intended to settle the poor and marginalised communities closer to where they worked.

Tau further challenged local governments to also rethink their land use and informal settlement policies and infrastructure investment.

According to Stats SA’s 2016 community survey, five million black South Africans reside in informal settlements.

Internal migration, said Tau, resulted in more than 63% of the general population residing in cities. This figure was projected to climb to 70% in 2030 and by 80% in 2050, he said.

“These internal migration patterns are compounded by the arrival of asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants coming from the continent and elsewhere. It is important to note that these documented and undocumented migrants are both low- to high-skilled individuals,” he said.

Stats SA’s mid- year population report for 2018 revealed that South Africa is estimated to receive a net immigration of 1.02 million people between 2016 and 2021.

Most international migrants settle in Gauteng (47.5%) while the least are found in the Northern Cape province (0.7%).

Tau argued that for local government to succeed in managing rapid migration there needed to be a multi-linked national migration observatory framework, which would collect and collate data for use by government at national to local levels.

He added that there needed to be capacity building of municipalities to address and mitigate emergent migration pressures into integrated development planning while still addressing the legacy of apartheid spatial planning.