Addressing migration to cities
AS THE country reels from the impact of the devastating floods in parts of KwaZulu-Natal, the discourse on the promotion of sustainable natural environments, enhanced civic performance and service delivery through smart cities has again come to the fore.
It is, after all, incidents like these that smart cities are assumed to address. These include increasing urbanisation, rising population and climate change. Consequently, a window of opportunity (albeit an unfortunate one) to make the case for smart cities has been created by the disaster.
This article contends, however, that for any such smart city project or venture to work, the obsession with flyovers, robot-serviced eateries and other sci-fi conjured realities has to be substituted with due consideration for the social factors influencing rural-urban migration in South Africa. Such deliberation will probably lead to a departure from the glamour of “smartness” and everything cool, on to the more mundane act of knocking on the doors of rural municipalities, seeking to understand their inherent handicaps and proffering strategies for improvement.
In the face of the recent flooding disaster, it is hard to imagine, as experts believe, that such occurrences will worsen as long as more people migrate from rural to urban areas and as the effects of climate change strengthen their grip on communities, resulting in many socio-economic problems. Smart cities, which ultimately means the optimal use of a city’s resources and technology to make it more liveable and sustainable, are thought to be a viable solution to the problems.
The reality of smart cities in South Africa, however, remains elusive, not due to a lack of effort but due to the implications of rural-urban migration which puts pressure on the sustainability of the resources of cities as well as their capacity to deliver services. This calls for careful consideration of the factors behind rural-urban migration.
The writings of Everett Spurgeon Lee on migration provide some valuable insight.
He suggests that migration is determined chiefly by the nature and condition of the area of origin, the area of destination as well as other personal and intervening factors.
Although the rural-urban migration pattern traces back to the apartheid administration’s spatial planning and migrant labour policies, the major push factor of migration from the rural areas is poor service delivery, poverty, poor health, education and unemployment.
These are the push factors from rural areas to the cities which fare better in the delivery of services, primarily due to a history of induced spatial bias. Although maladministration is commonplace in municipalities, as the auditor-general’s reports have shown in recent years, it is vital to note that there are systemic reasons behind the difficulty faced by rural municipalities with service delivery.
At the onset of democracy, the mandate for service delivery was decentralised to municipalities, a seemingly laudable move to make. However, municipalities, especially the rural ones, lack the revenue base, financial muscle and expertise to adequately do this.
Their major source of revenue is the national allocation which is structurally skewed in favour of the national government, leaving municipalities to mostly sustain themselves.
The metros fare better in this regard due to a historically advantaged economic and investment environment. The consequence is that rural municipalities fail to meet the constitutional obligation to provide basic services to citizens.
The result of the phenomenon is that the prevailing conditions in rural municipalities serve as push factors for rural-urban migration, resulting in increasing urban populations in the cities and prompting them to strive to increase housing, primary health-care services and related infrastructure. The pressure serves as motivation for the adoption of smarter, technologically oriented service delivery systems.
However, the idea that creating smart cities will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of service provision in urban areas is not self-sustaining if there is a parallel increase in rural-urban
migration numbers.
First, the bulk of rural-urban migrants are either unemployed or hold informal jobs and live in informal settlements in and around the cities. These account for serious environmental problems as seen by the presence of informal settlements on the outskirts of towns and townships, often times, near river banks despite the hazards inherent.
Second, such dwellers are less likely to pay for the cities’ services, putting the financing of the smart city principles in jeopardy while potentially contributing to urban decay and landscape degradation.
Last, due to the emergence of the informal settlements at the peripheries of the cities, the provision of basic services like water and electricity becomes difficult due to limited resources.
This article is in no way discouraging rural-urban migration at the expense of smart cities but making the case for simultaneous development of the rural areas while clamouring for smarter urban cities. In fact, developed rural areas and administration might be the best chance for the survival of smart cities because this will help ease the pressure on cities.
Although a lot of focus is on smart cities, the impact of rural-urban migration on rural communities is often neglected and in the larger picture of things, has social and economic implications on the country’s development. This is because migration from the rural areas leads to a reduction in productivity in such communities.
This is because much-needed skills, innovation and entrepreneurship have sought survival in the cities. There is also the negative effect that such migration has on family life where parents and guardians have had to relinquish their roles to secondary parties in the quest to eke out a living in the cities.
The importance and potential of rural development is mostly underemphasised at the macro policy level and it will take concerted research and windows of opportunity, such as the recent devastating floods in Durban, to change the narrative. Some strategies among others, for sustainable rural development include the establishment of innovation hubs, the provision of incentives for professionals to work in rural areas, access to vocational education, a better public transport system in rural areas and a more equitable allocation of finances to rural municipalities.
It is difficult to argue against the sweeping wave of all things “smart” and how technology can better our lives, and this article has not attempted to do that.
Rather, it advocates for the development of rural public services. First, to a level that does not create such a strong push factor that it negatively affects the sustainability of cities and smart cities ideals and second, to a level where those who move to town from rural areas have the capacity and skills of a driving force to contribute to the development of towns and cities.