GLOBALISATION/COMMODIFICATION OR DEGLOBALISATION/ DECOMMODIFICATION IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA Patrick Bond The main trends in contemporary South African urban policy were set before the end of apartheid, when market logic was adopted with the assistance of the World Bank. Once in power, the African National Congress amplified this logic in several crucial respects, as witnessed in the 1994 housing and 1998 municipal government policies. Those policies failed to address long-standing deficiencies in housing finance, services provision, land distribution, residential segregation and the like. The government is, hence, dealing an intense popular backlash partly characterised by ’IMF Riot’ reactions, and partly by highly organised, ideologically sophisticated, sustained resistance. The protests began in earnest in 1997, but in 1999 began to take an organisational form that may ultimately presage a new political party. The style, rhetoric and programme of the urban protests are consistent with other international movements associated with the ‘decommodification’ of services and the ‘deglobalisation’ of capital. One result of the backlash, in 2000, was the government’s election-time promise of ‘free basic services’ to municipal residents. However, as witnessed in the case of Johannesburg, the turn from neoliberalism is not complete, and struggles continue over services disconnections, pre-paid meters and the shape of water tariffs. Introduction The forces of globalisation and commodification, and the countervailing forces of deglobalisation (of capital) and decommodification (of basic needs), are together locked in combat in South Africa, in a manner as polarised as anywhere in the world. These circumstances allow us to pose three stark questions. First, what dynamics underlie the trends of international ‘neoliberal’ market expansion and socio-economic polarisation, and of resistance? Second, taking two periods / the 1990s, and 2000 /2005 / within South Africa’s transition to democracy, can we compress the processes of urban policy-making and practical implementation, and identify a coherent trajectory associated with the roll- out and roll-back of neoliberalism? Third, how do we interpret the sometimes explosive political mobilisations in South African cities since the early 1990s, and what might they imply in terms of future social development and public policy? Policy Studies, Vol. 26, Nos 3/4, 2005 ISSN 0144-2872 print/1470-1006 online/05/03/4337-22 – 2005 Policy Studies Institute DOI: 10.1080/01442870500198395