Recognising, explaining and measuring chronic urban poverty in South Africa Susan Parnell and Tim Mosdell University of Cape Town parnell@enviro.uct.ac.za ; tim@pdg.co.za Chronic poverty in South Africa, like elsewhere in Africa, is overwhelmingly understood as a rural phenomonon. This paper seeks to counter this belief and provides a broad overview of the current issues and debates around the urbanisation of poverty. Against background analysis of why apartheid made urban blacks poor and why these patterns of poverty are being entrenched to create chronic poverty for many urbanites, the paper sets out a methodology for profiling poverty in 9 South African cities. The objective of generating a baseline poverty profile is to provide an evolving framework for the ongoing monitoring of poverty in cities. In particular the methodology of the City Development Index CDI is explored as a comparative, quanitfiable measure of urban poverty that provides an appropriate and flexible tool for policy interventions. 1 Recognising Urban Poverty If there is a typical ‘face of poverty’ in South Africa then this picture is no longer only a rural women engaged in subsistence agricultural production. It is an HIV positive child living in an environmentally degraded informal settlement in a rapidly growing city - without services and subjected to organised and household violence and vulnerable to global economic and political regime changes. Despite the fact that the apartheid government removed all African people who were unemployed from urban areas, there is no South African City that is free of poverty. Since the democratic elections of 1994 urban regeneration and integration has been a key national objective (Box 1). However, every formal poverty reduction programme run by government has an overtly rural bias, and there is a very widely held conviction that the problem of chronic poverty is located in rural areas. Box 1: Key national and international urban poverty reduction policies and objectives National policy imperatives and targets for reducing urban poverty International policy imperatives and development targets on urban poverty ?? Reconstruction and Development Programme 1 ?? The Urban Development Strategy 2 ?? The Urban Development Framework 3 ?? Developmental Local Government 4 ?? Urban Renewal Programme 5 ?? Millennium targets for 2015 6 ?? Habitat Agenda 7 ?? New Partnership of Africa’s Development (NEPAD) 8 ?? Cities Alliance without slums 9 ?? World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg Plan of Action 10 1 ANC, 1994: The Reconstruction and Development Programme , Praxis Press, Durban 2 http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/rdp/urbanrdp.html#CONTENTS 3 SA Government, 1997: National Urban Development Strategy. Pretoria. 4 South Africa, 1998: Local Government White Paper, Department of Constitutional Development, Pretoria 5 Details available from Department of Housing and Department of Provincial and Local Government