Township renewal: Kwamashu case study

The restructuring of local government in South Africa began in the mid-1990s. A number of smaller local councils in the greater Durban area were amalgamated into a single metropolitan municipality, and the boundaries of the city were expanded to incorporate a number of new areas. The department responsible for economic development at the time started to look for a suitable location for a focused, municipality-led intervention in the newly incorporated areas. The political violence of the 1980s had been particularly intense in the northern areas. As a result, development in those areas had been impeded, and there was a greater level of need.

This study looks at the township renewal project in Kwamashu townships and makes recommendations for efficiency. The KwaMashu Town Centre (KMTC) project began in 1999. The centre faced a number of problems, some of them interrelated:

• The town centre planned for KwaMashu from the mid-1950s had never developed.

• There was a lack of investment, both public and private.

• Residents had to travel long distances to access facilities, goods and services.

• Public transport infrastructure was poorly developed.

• There was a lack of security, social infrastructure and recreation facilities.

The study observes that in 1998, a pre-planning assessment concluded that the greatest positive economic impact could be achieved by focusing on the development of one centre in the newly incorporated northern areas – namely the KwaMashu Town Centre. Key reasons included:

• It was already a busy transportation hub for train, bus and taxi commuters. This meant there were already large numbers of people in a highly accessible location.

• It had a large area of well-located, undeveloped land owned by the state that had been set aside for a town centre. This land had potential for future.

The paper identifies some of the achievements of the projects as upgrading of infrastructure and engineering services, planning framework and zoning and regulatory frameworks, upgrade of a number of the important road links to other economic centres and links to existing railway stations, 6ha of prime housing land ready to be sold and developed, a Metro Police station, high-grade shopping centre and others while uncertain about the mixed-use development model, long-term sustainability amongst others.

The paper concludes by stating some of the lessons learnt from the project.