Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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A model for integrated tourism infrastructure planning in the South African public sector
(2024) Chettiar, Shamilla
Infrastructure supports competitiveness, productivity and economic growth. While planning is critical for co-ordination and delivery of infrastructure, integrated infrastructure planning models remain elusive. Integrated infrastructure planning is especially important to derive maximum benefits from limited public sector funding. This research focussed on infrastructure planning in the tourism context. Within the complex South African public sector planning system, the responsibility for infrastructure and tourism planning lies with multiple departments at national, provincial and local government spheres. Tourism infrastructure needs can therefore best be addressed through integrated planning. This thesis presents the results of a qualitative, multi-method study. Various methods, such as reviews of documents, key-informant interviews, focus groups and case studies were utilised to gather data. The research also contains the reflections of the researcher who has extensive experience in public sector planning. The research question was: “What are the key elements of a model for integrated tourism infrastructure planning undertaken by the South African public sector?” The model proposes three key elements - a National Tourism Spatial Development Framework; Regional Tourism Masterplans; and a Tourism Infrastructure Strategy and Plan. A People component has also emerged as being significant for the effectiveness of the model. The study further confirmed that the model will support the integration of tourism, economic, spatial and infrastructure planning and development. In the long - term integrated public sector tourism infrastructure planning in South Africa, should yield greater public sector investment, stimulate greater private sector investment, and ultimately support the growth and competitiveness of the tourism sector. This research makes a significant contribution to knowledge for integrated infrastructure planning.
An application of John Rawls' principles of social justice to planning: issues arising from the implementation of the national housing subsidy programme in the inner City of Johannesburg
(2024) Oelofse, Michael Gerald
John Rawl' s conception of social justice has had a fundamental influence on liberal ethics yet its practical implications for distributive planning have rarely been considered in any comprehensive way. This is the key contribution of this thesis. Using the South African housing subsidy system, it examines how distributional policies may be structured to benefit the least advantaged and explores the consequences of their implementation in Johannesburg's inner city. Based on a literature review, it argues that Western planners often place the responsibility for distributional decisions on political processes, or concern themselves with maximising the public good without addressing the consequent allocation of the costs and benefits among members of society. Contemporary planning theory continues to avoid the substantive c.9ntent of social justice. Confronted with what seem to be equally valid, often competing conceptions of social justice, planners focus on the fairness of planning procedures instead of taking normative, principled positions on distributional outcomes. However, just procedure alone does not guarantee a just outcome. This requires adherence to some predefined set of distributional principles, and Rawls' political conception of social justice is presented here as a reasonable and compelling option for planners. Drawing on the author's practical experience, this thesis traces the liberal influence on the formulation of housing subsidy policy in South Africa and argues that national policy generally conforms with Rawlsian distributional principles. However, an empirical analysis of the housing sector in Johannesburg's inner city reveals that its impact is dissipated by a lack of local commitment to the original principles. Conflicting development principles and a failure among many residents to honour the obligations attached to housing benefits compound the problem. This thesis concludes that Rawlsian principles of social justice in combination with the contemporary communicative turn in planning provide planners with a powerful means of placing social justice on the development agenda, but that these principles require championing because conflicting principles and interests continuously place the needs of the least advantaged at risk.
Food security in rural areas: the case of the Umkhanyakude District Municipality in the Northern Region of KwaZulu-Natal
(2024) Nhlozi, Mduduzi W
Studies on food security focusing on households began attracting considerable attention in the mid-1970s following a surge in the cost of food production and food prices. The surge in prices led to increasing percentage of food insecure households throughout the world. To address the growing number of people affected by hunger, countries sought to develop new technological techniques to produce food in large quantities particularly in the developing world. The thrust of the approach was to ensure the availability of food first. The understanding was that large food quantities would result in food-secure nations. Overtime, researchers realised that improved food production does not lead to food secure households. Since then, the percentage of people affected by hunger has continued to increase with 690 million (8.9%) considered food insecure in 2020 (Food Agriculture Organisation – FAO, 2021) despite relative increase in food production. South Africa is not an exception with 23% of the population reported food insecure in 2020 (van der Berg et al., 2021). The reports by the NIDS-CRAM have indicated that the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic in 2019 has further exacerbated food insecurity at a household level. The purpose of the study is to explore mechanisms used by rural households to achieve food security during various threats and risks to their livelihoods. The case study adopted is the Umkhanyakude region which is in the rural area of northern part of KwaZulu Natal. It covers an area of 13855.35 km² and accommodates approximately 625 846 people constituting a total of 128 195 households (Stats SA, 2011). The region was selected as a case study due to its economic, social, demographic and ecological characteristics. The study uses semistructured questionnaire to collect information on lived experiences of households in their quest to access and ensure availability of food. The study finds that households use several food strategies namely economy-related, culture-related and rite-of-passage to achieve food security. The strategies are framed within the context of what Nee and Ingram (1998) refer to as new institutionalism or new institutional economics. New institutional economics places focus on the importance of a “web of interrelated norms – formal and informal” that govern how individuals and households in Umkhanyakude region “respond to perception of costs and benefit in exchanges and invest in or divest themselves of particular ties” (Nee and Ingram, 1998: 19). The study argues that these strategies are embedded within social norms, values, and cultural practices beyond the ambit of orthodox economics. It further argues that the discourse on food security in rural areas must be framed beyond the economic analytical framework, to reckon with the embedded social and cultural norms, practices, rules, and relationships and to develop salient policy interventions. The study advocates for the development of localised food security plans by local municipalities to improve food security status of rural households. This is because food insecurity is largely felt at community and household levels. It is important that policy frameworks to manage food security are placed at municipal levels where local communities can easily access them.
Governance of infrastructure provision in informal settlements: the electrification of unproclaimed areas in the City of Johannesburg
(2022) Chikomwe, Savory
An increasing number of informal settlements in South Africa are receiving interim services for extended periods while awaiting permanent upgrading or housing solutions. This thesis explores the complex governance arrangements and challenges that arise around the provision of basic services using City of Johannesburg as a case study, with a focus on three ‘unproclaimed’ informal settlements that have undergone electrification. These are Stjwetla, Protea South and Slovo Park. The three cases shed light on the modes of infrastructure governance that characterize informal settlement upgrading as practiced in the City of Johannesburg and to some extent in South Africa more generally. Formal grid electrification in the case study settlements is juxtaposed by other temporary basic infrastructure provisioning in a complicated socio-political, institutional and governance context. The inquiry adopted a qualitative methodology. The case studies of the three settlements and the City of Johannesburg were compiled through an extensive literature and document review and indepth interviews with key informants. These spanned community leadership, political representatives, experts and officials in municipal, provincial and national departments and stateowned entities. The thesis finds ambivalence, disconnections, misalignments and contradictions in the basic infrastructure provision and upgrading processes within the City of Johannesburg and between the City and central government departments. This was accentuated by the role of the national state-owned electricity company Eskom in one of the three settlements. The thesis finds that the prolonged temporary status of the informal settlements promotes contestations at various levels, including ligation. In the absence of progress towards permanent upgrading, investment in grid electrification ambiguously signals permanence even where there is no state intention to upgrade in situ. Within communities, this confusion contributes to tension while also triggering consolidation and in-migration. Differing interpretations across entities of the state about the role of grid electrification in informal settlement trajectories open up space for temporary electrification ultimately to lead towards the pragmatic adoption of permanent in situ upgrading. This notwithstanding, literature reviewed for this thesis points instead toward the necessity for a turn to off-grid electrification technologies for informal settlements.
Post-1994 South African university infrastructure: a critical study of the framework and spatial principles to guide future developments
(2024) Hansen, Ludwig
Due to the lack of institutional guidelines for the development and expansion of universities in South Africa a need exists to study and understand the key challenges facing its 26 universities. This doctoral research evolved from the researcher’s urban design and architectural work in practice which, over the past fifteen years, has included urban design for a number of university campuses and their spatial development frameworks. Through this practice-based work it became clear that no institutional guidelines for the development and expansion of universities in South Africa exist. A need was therefore identified for the study of existing campus master plan documents and international campus planning literature to pinpoint the elements, principles, configurations and methodologies in order to guide universities in producing integrated spatial design and development frameworks for their campuses. Apart from a lack of guidance from national government, the increasing pressure on the national fiscus to provide funding for the expanding needs of universities is forcing institutions to re-consider methodologies towards expanding, improving and implementing their infrastructures, buildings and spaces. These alternative planning methods also imply broader partnerships to ensure long-term sustainability and relevance within the South African context. The role of collaboration with the host city or community is becoming increasingly relevant and the development of ‘place-based universities’ must be seen as critical in order to ensure long term sustainability. Recent international research demonstrates that universities are valuable stakeholders within their broader context, making them instruments of regeneration in engaging future developmental necessities. In light of the above, the research objectives are in principle three-fold. Firstly, to establish what spatial principles guide well-functioning university campuses; secondly, which methodologies are used to achieve this; thirdly, to research approaches towards achieving improved integration and collaboration of university campuses with their host cities, communities and stakeholders. The research methodology in this study focuses on the literature review dealing with the historical development of universities and the analysis of their spatial forms, as well as in-depth reviews of 25 contemporary university campus masterplans from across the world, in order to establish normative spatial design guidelines. These findings are then used to analyse the 26 South African universities with their 92 sub-campuses in order to offer improved insights into their challenges and characteristics. The same principles are also used to assess and reflect on the researcher’s practice-based work, with a specific focus through in-depth case studies of the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Johannesburg (especially the Rand Afrikaans University campus) and the recently established Sol Plaatje University. This thesis is organized in three parts, featuring eight chapters. The first part outlines the research problem, including the review of relevant literature and adopted methods of inquiry. The second part covers the analytical study, including case study descriptions, categorisations and performance analyses. Finally, the third part summarises and discusses the results of this research project and makes an institutional recommendation on how these can continue to be taken forward in both practice and research
The polymorphic state and real estate: rethinking the relationship between the state and real estate through Johannesburg & Bangalore
(2022) Pillay, Sarita
This research seeks to expand understanding of the relationship between the state and real estate. It is guided by the impulse, from experience in urban land justice activism, to acknowledge multiplicity in the state, and to contextualise the nebulous boundary between the private and public. I argue that commonly adopted concepts in critical scholarship – in the strands of urban power, urban planning and historical materialism – do not adequately offer a means to do this. Thus, drawing from how these concepts have been stretched and refuted in critical scholarship, an analytical lens is assembled for this research. It is guided by three influences: a historical materialist analytic of the urban; non-normative approaches to a postcolonial state theorised in India; and insights on the amorphous boundary between the state and private sector in real estate The starting point for this research is Johannesburg. However, an expansive spectrum of Indian critical scholarship surfaced in reading the relationship between the state and real estate. This raised the methodological utility of bringing Johannesburg into empirical conversation with an Indian city. Emerging organically as this city was Bangalore. Rather than ‘cases’, Johannesburg and Bangalore are approached as ‘vantage points’ through which to explore the relationship between the ubiquitous, albeit socially constructed, state and real estate. This research was thus guided by the question: (How) can the relationship between the state and real estate be conceptualised through Johannesburg and Bangalore? To begin to explore this, I undertook in-depth interviews with 62 key informants in real estate and government, as well as observations in real estate conferences and as an intern in a real estate consultancy firm. Additional analysis was undertaken of news articles, industry reports and building statistics. Three lesser-seen relationships between the state and real estate emerged, grounded in each city but developed through each other: an enabling relationship between local government and real estate shaped by the post-apartheid transition in Johannesburg; central government’s incorporation of real estate in Bangalore; and the Government Employees Pension Fund’s (GEPF) embeddedness in Johannesburg real estate as an ‘investor state’. In a landscape of differentiated real estate, the state was shown to be central to financialised forms of real estate – but not only so. This contributes to conceptualising a polymorphic state and real estate. Empirically, this work expands critical scholarship to direct considered attention to non-corporate forms of real estate in India, and listed corporate real estate in South Afric
The Quantitative Hydrogeological Mapping of Zebediela Estates, Central Transvaal
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1970-05) Pretorius, Desmond Aubrey
The groundwater system on zebediela Estates, situated along the northern edge of the Springbok Flats in the Central Transvaal, has been studied by physiographic, geologic , geophysical, geochemical, and hydrologic methods . Emphasis has been placed on the subsurface mapping of the spatial distribution patterns of a nvn1ber of hydrogeologic parameters, and computer-based polynomial trend surface analysis has been employed to facilitate the interpretation of the maps. The computer has also been used to determine the general statistics of the frequency distributions of the various parameters and to platform sequential multiple linear regression analysis in an attempt to determine the relationships between the variables . Data arrays of observations, computations, and interpretations have been disp layed in 38 tables in the text and 21 appendices to the text . The distr ibution patterns , in one and two dimensions, have been portrayed in 8 text figures and 117 maps, separate from the t ext. The area studied covers approximate ly 23 square mil es, in which 556, 000 orange trees have been planted on 5800 acres . An average annual amount of 2400 million gallons of water is required to maintain t he operation, and 560 million gallons of this quantity are withdrawn, on the average, each year from boreholes tapping the groundwater resources of the Estates . Up to April, 1969, 315 holes had been drilled, and 151 had become producers at one time or another. In 19 years of exploitation between 1950 and 1968, 10, 600 million gallons of groundwater were withdrawn, at an average rate of 13 million gallons per year per production borehole. The study has shown that the groundwater system supplying this substantial quantity of water consists of two main elements - a piedmont alluvial slope, in which stream channels and paleochannels on coalescing alluvial fans are acting as conduits for the transmistion of water from the intake areas; and an underlying bedrock storage reservoir composed of aquifers of the Transvaal and Karroo sequences . The Malmani dolomite aquifers and the Stormberg basalt aquifers are superior to those of the Wolkberg quartzites, shales, and lavas, and the Stormberg Cave sandstones. It has been possible to distinguish two cycles of Karoo basalts, each of which shows differentiation . The upper cycle is far more important as an aquifer than the lower cycle. The piedmont slope is composed of portions of three alluvial fans , the spines of which have a general southeasterly trend towards the junction of the Nkumpi and Olifant rivers in the valley-flat environment well to the south of the Estates . The upland areas above the apices of the fans embrace the mountain ranges which form the northern rim of the Transvaal Basin, and these uplands have suffered right-lateral movements along extensive east-northeast-trending transcurrent faults which must have continued to be active into recent times in order to displace the stream course on the fans. The fan-head section and portion of the midfan section of the Nkumpi fan, in which the Gompies River is situated, occur over the east-central, eastern, and southeastern parts of the property, and, where underlain by the upper basalt aquifers, constitute the most important source of groundwater on Zebediela Estates. The whole of the fan-head and mid-fan sections of the Mamukebe fan are located in the riorthern, west-central, western, and southwestern localities of the area studied. The fan is much smaller than either of the others, and is underlain by Wolkberg rocks, Cave sandstones, and lower basalts. Its overall groundwater potential is consequently lower than that of either of the other two components of the piedmont slope. Only a very restricted portion of the fan-head section of the Mogoto fan occurs in the extreme northwestern corner of the Estates, where it is underlain by the dolomite aquifer, Its groundwater parameters are consequently very favourable, but the true potential of this fan lies beyond the western boundary of the property. The average yield of boreholes in the upper basalt is 3600 gallons per hour; in the lower basalt, 2000 g.p.h.; in the sandstone, 1500 g.p.h.; in the dolomite, 11,200 g.p.h.; and in the quartzites, 1500 g.p.h. The average yield for all boreholes on the Estates is 4100 gallons per hour. All of these figures are appreciably higher than those for equivalent formations elsewhere in South Africa, testifying to the impoi,tance of the piedmont alluvial slope environment in the overall groundwater system at Zebediela. The average annual recharge of the groundwater reservoirs from all sources has been estimated at 700 million gallons. With the average annual withdrawal being of the order of 560 million gallons, the possibility exists that production from the aquifers can be increased by 25 per cent, without fear of serious, permanent deterioration in the performance of the groundwater system. However, excessive exploitation in times of low recharge might lead to the development of quality h.azards with respect to sodiuum, ehloride, and bicarbonate over the upperbasalts. This possibility does not exist for the remaining aquifers, particularly those in the dolomite, from which relatively pure water is drawn. An added problem in the recharge of the upper basalt aquifer is the contamination of t he groundwater in storage by lithium, brought into the Zebediela groundwater- system by the Nkumpi River, which transmits the element from the granite terrain to the north of the mountainous rim of the Springbok Flats. A new model of groundwater exploration has been devised, based on optimum drilling sites being located where coincidence takes place of piedmont stream channel conduits, dolomite or upper basalt aquifers, and transcurrent fault aquicludes, Results obtained from the employment of this model during two years of drilling subsequent to its development in a preliminary form produced an increase of 14 per cent in the average yield of all boreholes drilled.
Why do equity oriented, ‘progressive’ planning policies fail to redress the apartheid city? An examination of Planning Instrumentality in South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Klug, Neil; Bénit-Gbaffou, Claire; Todes, Alison
In the immediate post-apartheid period, the fields of urban planning and housing experienced what some have called a ‘golden era’ during which planning played a significant role in the Reconstruction and Development Programme of the government, through developing new and progressive planning and housing policy instruments. Some of these instruments were designed to expedite the release of serviced land and provide subsidised housing, address the apartheid legacy of spatial segregation and housing backlogs. Despite success in the large number of houses delivered to the poor and increased service delivery to previously disenfranchised communities, by the mid 2000s there was growing criticisms of the state’s failure to redress discriminatory apartheid spatial patterns. South Africa was also experiencing growth in unemployment and inequality between emerging elites on the one hand and the majority of previously disadvantaged in society. This study sought to examine what role planning policy instruments played in failing to address the spatial legacies of apartheid. Acknowledging the wide range of potential variables contributing to this lack of efficacy, the study took an in-depth grounded, research approach. Using three case studies on different planning and housing related policy instruments and suits of instruments, at different phases of the policy cycle framework, it examined whether or not the state had managed to address housing and other inequalities. The first case study involved the examination of the processes and practices in formulating a local eviction policy instrument, the second reflected on housing officials’ engagement with the National Housing Code suit of instruments, and the third examined the practices and processes of implementing the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme. The findings of these case studies were that equity oriented, ‘progressive’ planning policies fail to redress the apartheid spatial inequalities because they are either not being selected for use or, where they are being applied, had limited impact because they were being implemented in a watered-down fashion. My thesis shows that there are multiple factors, from broad and complex governance structures to the actions of individual actors, that affect the efficacy of policy instruments.

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