Municipal cultural policies in Canada

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CHAPTER 3 Profile of the City of Tshwane

Introduction

This chapter seeks to present the profile of the City of Tshwane. This exercise is very fundamental to the thesis because Tshwane has been identified as the study location. Thus, it is of paramount importance for the reader to be familiar with the Tshwane cultural context as well as to understand and appreciate conditions that triggered the research. Amongst other things, the chapter focuses mainly on Tshwane’s institutional character, particularly as influenced by certain cultural dynamics and vice versa. An obvious entry point in this regard is to first locate the City of Tshwane within a national historic and geo-political context.

Panoramic history of South Africa

As a geographical space within Africa, South Africa’s history is old as the continent itself. But as a modern societal construct with governance features incorporating those from the west, its history could be traced to the first colonial sea explorers, starting with the arrival of the Portuguese merchants, Bartholomew Dias and Vasco da Gama, in the 15th century. However, colonial governance started in earnest in South Africa with the tenure of Jan van Riebeeck from 1652. Since then, the country has experienced four political epochs, each with its own administrative type of governance that incorporated the concept of municipality. They are: Dutch colonialism, British colonialism, Apartheid rule, and ANC dispensation.
These various governments in each of the eras demarcated the country into geographical entities for administrative purposes with different labels. Both the Dutch and British colonial powers, respectively, called their territories colonies, though the latter also used the term Union towards the end of its prowess in South Africa just before the apartheid dispensation. Parallel to these were the Boer Republics, which later came to be provinces under the National Party government in 1948. They were: The Transvaal, Orange Free State, Cape and Natal Republics. Scattered throughout the provinces were ten ‘self-governing’ Black Homeland States. Upon coming to power in 1994, the ANC government created nine provinces after the collapsing of these structures. They are: Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, North West. Gauteng Province is composed of a fraction drawn from Transvaal. Tshwane is in Gauteng Province, as displayed in the map10 on the next page.

Gauteng Province: a geo-cultural profile

Gauteng is one of the nine provinces in South Africa established by the post 1994 government. Before then, the province was one of the components of the old Transvaal province under the apartheid government. Transvaal stretched between the Vaal and Limpopo Rivers. During the transition from Transvaal to Gauteng, the province used to be known as the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (or PWV) region.
Even though Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa in terms of geographical space, occupying only 1,4% of the land area of the country, it is however highly urbanised and has a population of 8,837,178, the second-largest after Kwa-Zulu Natal. 2005 estimates put forward by the CSIR Gauteng Spatial Development Perspective suggest, however, that Gauteng has overtaken Kwa-Zulu Natal11 to become the most populous province in South Africa, with a total of 9.5 million people living there, growing at about 100,000 people every year. (South Africa. City of Johannesburg 2008).
There are four major South African racial groupings that reside in Gauteng Province, namely: Africans, Coloureds, Indians and Whites. According to the 2006 census, of the province’s 9,525,571 inhabitants, Blacks constitute the majority (73,8%); Whites (19,95%), Coloureds (3,8%) and Indians (2,5%). Gauteng is a highly urbanised area, with only 4% of inhabitants living in non-urban areas having in their governance systems elements of traditional authorities. One fifth (20,5%) of Gauteng’s inhabitants speak Afrikaans as their home language, as against 18,4% who speak isiZulu and 16,1% who speak English. The cosmopolitan character of the province, is illustrated by the fact that it is home to 34,4% of South Africans who do not have an official language as their home language. From a historical point of view, the distribution of resources has largely favoured White and the two other racial groupings, the Coloureds and Indians, albeit also disproportionately according to their statistics and apartheid socio-political hierarchy. Africans were always the last on the scale in all respects (Punt, 2005:1-19).
According to the South African National Census (2008), Gauteng is growing rapidly due to mass urbanisation that is a feature of many developing countries. The ‘State Of The Cities Report’ predicts the urban portion of Gauteng – comprised primarily of the cities of Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni (the East Rand) and Tshwane (Greater Pretoria) – will be a polycentric urban region with a projected population of 14,6 million people by 2015, making it one of the largest cities in the world. It is for this reason that it has warmed itself to the international notion of a global city.

Gauteng as a global city region

The basis of the notion of a global city region is derived from an international trend whereby cities, as a result of ability to create linkages and interdependency of trade flows, information, investment and cultural links among each other across the world, grow more powerful, as regions that can sustain themselves outside the loop of central or national governments. As in the case of Barcelona referred to in Chapter 1, such cities are even able to pass regional language policies which the central government must endorse.
The above is but one example of a situation where these two spheres of government must co-exist rather than antagonise each other to leverage their gains. This is precisely a principle that would ensure the feasibility of the concept of a global city region as proposed by the provincial government for the purposes of a creating seamless economy among the three metropolitan areas within its jurisdiction. The Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) sees practical manifestation of the objective as hinging on a three-pronged strategy which would; firstly, require all stakeholders to think regionally, but act locally, to compete in the hierarchy of global city; secondly, cooperate specifically among the three tiers of government and; thirdly, create a compact urban model that is suitable for its own challenges. In this regard, the GPG proposes a polycentric model of city-region whereby the multiple urban centres that constitute the region within the three metros, will have to relate in a complementary rather than competitive fashion, in order to secure their individual and collective cultural, socio-economic and political interests in a robust world market (Wray, 2010).

The establishment of the City of Tshwane as a metropolitan entity

The City of Tshwane was inaugurated in 2000 after an amalgamation of 13 former municipalities drawn from Gauteng and North West Provinces. Most of the municipalities were formed during the apartheid. The City of Tshwane’s overall mandate was to serve a population of about 2,2 million through provision of services as determined by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996, and laws pertaining to local government functions (South Africa. City of Tshwane 2005).
From the political angle, the council comprised of 152 seats; 76 of which were ward-based and the other half proportional representation. An administrative component of council was also constructed by way of employing functionaries whose duties were to carry out the instructions of council by implementing its decisions on all matters related to the provision of services to residents. The third important structural feature of the composition of council was the creation of 76 ward committees to act as both the supportive structures for ward councillors, as well as to guarantee residents’ interests directly to council through ward councillors.

Legislative or policy framework on culture and development in the City of Tshwane

This section deals with how various types and aspects of legislations create conditions informing and affecting the formulating and operations of the CTMM. In terms of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996, a municipality must structure and manage its administrative, budgeting and planning processes to give priority to the basic needs of the community. This includes the promotion of the social and economic development of the community as the secondary expectations. Schedule 5 of the Constitution of South Africa lists major culture-related functions of local government as follows:
• Beaches and amusement facilities
• Billboards and the display of advertisements in public places
• Cemeteries, funeral parlours and crematoria
• Cleaning of streets
• Control of public nuisances
• Control of undertakings that sell liquor to the public
• Facilities for the accommodation, care and burial of animals
• Fencing and fences
• Licensing of dogs
• Licensing and control of undertakings that sell food to the public
• Local amenities
• Local sport facilities
• Markets
• Municipal abattoirs
• Municipal parks and recreation
• Municipal roads
• Noise pollution
• Pounds (livestock)
• Public places
• Street trading
• Street lighting
These functions should be read in conjunction with non-culture related ones as conferred on local governments in terms of Part B of Schedule 4 of the Constitution (South Africa 1996:schedule 4). All of the above functions find expression and guidance through a plethora of specific pieces of legislation relating to the governing of municipalities. To name but a few: The Municipal Structures Act 20 of 2002, Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000, Municipal Finance Management Act 26 of 2003 and Municipal Property Rates Act 6 of 2004). A brief discussion of the manifestation of one of the pieces of legislations in relation to IDP processes shall be discussed later in this section.

Policies and by-laws on culture passed by Tshwane

As mentioned during the introduction of the notion of IDP in this section, the IDP is not a stand-alone phenomenon. It is applied within a specific legislative context. Accordingly, various departments of the City of Tshwane have put in place, as below, a number of policies that seek to enhance development from their respective perspectives, often culminating in contradictions due to the fact that there were drawn outside a context of a unifying structured cultural policy.

How can culture affect development?

Development is culture subjective. It is determined and driven by the manner in which the society organises itself to gain access to resources. According to Schein (1992:12), this is manifested in how people form groups and relevant authority or administration through which to achieve what they want, thus creating precedence on why, how and when to do things. The administration is charged with the responsibilities to, amongst others, put in place legislative frameworks governing development.
Some scholars (Joynt & Warner, 1996; Korman, 1995:243-244) indicate that administration in turn, is influenced by culture on five specific areas, namely: direction, pervasiveness, strength, flexibility and commitment. Culture can determine the direction to which administration could go in respect to national goals. The direction can go either towards or away from the national goals, depending on whether the culture is prohibitive or encouraging. The extent to which administration can be pervasive, is determined by how it is shared by members. The strength of certain features of culture, such as religion, can have a serious impact on its members and thus administration. Work ethics and values could determine the character of the administration. The flexibility or otherwise of culture to other influences can also either enrich, or impoverish, administration. The nature and relation of culture in relation to organisational arrangements or social groups can determine the degree of commitment by members towards the administration and its goals.

IDP as a legislative development tool for culture-led development

The South African government has crafted and put in place the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) as one of the major legislative tools for synchronising development across its three tiers. The IDP is applied in the context of, or in conjunction with, other pieces of legislation relevant to a particular sphere of government. According to Section 25 of the Municipal Systems Act, each municipality in South Africa is expected to, immediately after the start of its term of office, put in place a single, inclusive strategic plan which links, integrates and coordinate plans and/or proposals for development within its jurisdiction. This would include the alignment and consolidation of resources around seamless budget circle, even though this is difficult given different financial years of each tier of government.
The CoT ordinarily draws its IDP cycles around its five-year strategy during which it identifies strategic areas of importance to receive attention. The strategic areas are drawn from a list of other strategic documents such as the national and provincial development policies, the City Development Strategy (CDS), Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIP), and local/regional Spatial Development frameworks.
The 2011-2016 IDP cycle is the municipality’s third, since its inception in 2000. A review of the three IDP cycle presents interesting observations. Whilst the documents make reference to the other important strategic document as listed above, they however do not form a point where the IDP is concerned. As a result, the IDP ultimately appears like a wish-list of projects meant to merely remedy the backlog of infrastructure, rather than to forecast the type of city to strive for. Invariably, some of the projects disappear from the radar as the IDP is regularly reviewed owing to demographic dynamics and the need to spend the budget in order to avoid roll-overs. This claim is affirmed by the 2011-2016 Draft IDP when it identifies two serious gaps within its parameters as, namely: the inability to confirm annual targets for each of the five years of the IDP; and to confirm projects for all five years of the IDP (Draft Tshwane Integrated Development Plan (2011-2016) for 2011/12 (2011:127). The statement is an admission that indeed the notion of integration is a misnomer in the approach to development by the municipality. Thus, it can be concluded that in this context, political expediency, instead of a specified development fulcrum, becomes the arbiter in terms of which projects get implemented or not.
From a cultural point of view, the 2011-2016 Draft IDP presents the municipality as envisioning, amongst others, “A multi-cultural city that encourages and supports diversity and integration, including spatial design that enables social inclusion…” yet there is no trace of the manifestation of this in terms of projects listed for implementation in the document. In fact, culture-orientated projects constitute 1,32% of the total IDP plan and 2011-2012 budget. Thus, culture has been left to the whims of developers to sponsor. The scenario has in turn led to more commercial capital projects – initiated by consultants and developers – being prioritised and approved by council at the expense of social infrastructure within the IDP (Mokebe, 2008).

Culture-led projects in the City of Tshwane

Urban regeneration projects:
• Re kgabisa Tshwane urban renewal project (in collaboration with the national Department of Public Work) which will focus on the renewal of government buildings in the Pretoria Inner City.
• Upgrading of the Wonderboom Airport.
• Bloed Street project.
• Marabastad renewal.
• Inner City renewal project (Mokebe, 2008).
Analysis of the projects reveals fascinating dynamics. Firstly, all the projects are led by different departments within the City of Tshwane. Actually, the Rekgabisa Tshwane Urban Renewal Project is initiated, funded and implemented by the national Department of Public Works. The intra and external  arrangements imply challenges in synergy and coordination of such projects. Secondly, the projects are not intended to give the City an African image, but rather to only save the face of the status quo with new cosmetics. Culture cannot be manicured through that which did not influence its creation. Fourthly, the role of Arts, Culture and Heritage Department has evidently been minimised to traditional performances without understanding the huge influence it has in elevating or enhancing the image of the city and, thus by extension, of the country.
Other projects:
There are numerous other culture-led or related projects that are specific to the Arts, Culture and Heritage Division. However, due to the lack of capacity in the Arts, Culture and Heritage Division as custodian of Arts, Culture and Heritage for the City of Tshwane, the projects are carried out by other divisions or departments within the municipality. For instance, Art in Public Places Strategy and the naming/renaming of geographical spaces are led by the Streetscape Management Section of the City Planning Division (Mokebe, 2008). It is the author’s considered opinion that the function could be best located within the Culture Section of the Education Section of the Social Development Department because it is more about human issues than landscaping dimensions. According to Mokebe (2008), the implication of functions carried out by unsuitable structures raises issues of proper coordination, accountability and even duplication of functions. Further down the stream, Mokebe cautions that the arrangement could easily lead to mismanagement and maladministration.

What is the relationship between culture and economic development?

The affinity between culture and economic development was clearly illustrated in Chapter 1. In the Tshwane context, a framework or strategy on the creative industries and tourism has clearly been identified and adopted for the exploration of economic potential of arts and culture in enriching the municipal budget and also empowers the artistic community. Furthermore it is critical that government invests a lot of funding on capacitating and resourcing its arts, culture and heritage department at all tiers of government i.e. local, provincial and national, since a well capacitated government on arts, culture and heritage can exploit the economic development, of not only the city, but the entire country as well (Mokebe, 2008).

Social cohesion through culture in Tshwane

The municipality has established a unit i.e. Integrated Community Development which focuses on vulnerable groups and identifies urgent interventions for such groups in collaboration with all its departments. Such interventions include the following:
• Allocating grants to welfare organisations.
• Registering indigent households in the City’s indigent registers.
• Identifying employment opportunities for unemployed youth and women through learner-ships in its different departments.
• Developing of a youth database for unemployed youths (Mokebe, 2008).
At another level, the lack of a dedicated Heritage Unit for the City of Tshwane has resulted in the municipality not having a policy framework to deal with matters that relate to indigenous cultural practices, like traditional rituals that involve the slaughtering of animals. Such a process has led to the regulation of such processes through western influenced legislation, which ignores the cultural rights and traditions of other cultural groups.

Stakeholder relations through culture in the City of Tshwane

The CoT has established relations with a number of stakeholders in order to develop, promote, preserve the arts, culture and heritage. To name but a few:
Arts and Culture Forums in all regions of the CoT.
UNISA – Music development
University of Pretoria – Music development
Tshwane University of Technology – Dance development. KARA heritage Institute – Heritage preservation Oppikoppi – Home of Jazz Programme
South African National Visual Arts Association – Visual Arts Development
South African Museums Association – Museums International Council of Museums – Museums
Tshwane Heritage Builders Association – Stakeholder relations Africa Leadership Institute – Governance Ifa Lethu – visual arts development
Over and above internal relations, the city has entered into a variety of agreements or relationships such as treaties and twinning partnerships with international counterparts. Included hitherto in some of the agreements are artistic and cultural exchange programmes. Interesting to note in this regarded is that the Arts, Culture and Heritage Section of the Department is not practically involved in the signing of these agreements, nor is Parliament or the National Department of International/Foreign Relations aware of such (Mokebe, 2008).

Summary of the Chapter

Chapter 3 has attempted to fulfil its major objective, of presenting the profile of the City of Tshwane as the thesis’ case study. Various factors that necessitated the exercised were outlined. The combination of factors, such as its political status as South Africa’s administrative capital, as well as its cosmopolitan character as a home of many cultures for diplomatic, academic, residential and work-related reasons, makes the City of Tshwane a candidate worthy above the rest of the country’s other cities. Despite all these positive attributes, it was discovered that culture was not regarded by the municipality one of the important aspects of service delivery. In fact, its significance seems to be diminishing gradually as suggested by consistent decline in its budget allocation for cultural projects every year as illustrated in Chapter 5; making it the municipal function with the least financial support. By the same token, it was officially acknowledged by the council official acting as its research representative, that the municipality lacks the financial resources and administrative capacity to draw cultural policy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Abstract
List of acronyms
List of figures
List of tables
Chapter 1: Introduction and overview of the study
1.1. Introduction
1.2 Background of the study
1.3 Cultural policy intervention in Barcelona
1.4 Cultural policy intervention in China: the Dalian experience
1.5 Research assumptions and hypotheses
1.6 The aim of the research
1.7 Research objectives
1.8 Research questions
1.9 Significance and justification of the study
1.10 Clarification of key concepts
1.11 The outline of the study
1.12 Summary of the Chapter
Chapter 2: Literature review
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Evolution of municipal cultural policy in Europe
2.3 Municipal cultural policies in Canada
2.4 Municipal Cultural policy in South Africa
2.5 Legislative review of cultural policy in South Africa
2.6 The City of Cape Town Draft Policy on Arts and Culture
2.7 eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality Draft Policy on Arts, Culture and Heritage
2.8 Cultural policy at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality
2.9 Review of cultural policy in the City of Tshwane
2.10 Summary of the Chapter
Chapter 3: Profile of the City of Tshwane
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Panoramic history of South Africa
3.3 Gauteng Province: a geo-cultural profile
3.4 Gauteng as a global city region
3.5 The establishment of the City of Tshwane as a metropolitan municipality
3.6 Legislative or policy framework on culture and development in the City of Tshwane
3.7 How can culture affect development?
3.8 IDP as a legislative development tool for culture-led development
3.9 Culture-led service delivery programme in the City of Tshwane
3.10 What is the relationship between culture and economic development?
3.11 Social cohesion through culture in Tshwane
3.12 Stakeholders relations through culture in the City of Tshwane
3.13 Summary of the Chapter
Chapter 4: Research methodology
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Research design
4.3 Selection of the case study area
4.4 Selection of the sample
4.5 Data collection
4.6 Designing the structured interview
4.7 Constructing the survey questionnaire
4.8 Piloting the questionnaire
4.9 Administering the questionnaire
4.10 Recording and coding of the data collected
4.11 Ethical considerations
4.12 Limitations of the study
4.13 Summary of the Chapter
Chapter 5: Survey questionnaire results and findings: Governance and Institutional Factors Section
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Results, findings and conclusions
5.3 Summary of the chapter
Chapter 6: Survey questionnaire results and findings: Physical (Infrastructure/Environment) Factors Section
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Results, findings and conclusions
6.3 Summary of the Chapter
Chapter 7: Survey questionnaire results and findings: Socio-Economic and Political Factors Section
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Results, findings and conclusions
7.3 Summary of the Chapter
Chapter 8: Conclusions and recommendations
8.1 Introduction
8. 2 Summary of the research findings
8.3. Concluding remarks
8.4 Recommendations
Bibliography
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