Traditional Authority and Territorialised Underdevelopment: Urban-Industrial Fractures in Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld

Gauteng province remains the engine of South Africa’s urban-industrial economy, but its dominance has long depended on the marginalisation of peripheral regions. The structural imbalance under apartheid was a result of policies that favoured the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging complex and underdeveloped black urban populations.

The apartheid regime created a political economy rooted in racial, class, and spatial segregation that territorialised underdevelopment. This was achieved by the deliberate displacement of Black urbanisation and suppressing wages to support industrial accumulation (Legassick & Innes, 1977).

Central to this system were the Bantustans or “Homelands” and industrial decentralisation, which, when viewed in combination, characterised an inherent paradox of apartheid’s capital-centric development logic (Litpon, 1986; Murray, 1988; Posel, 1991). Ongoing urban-industrial inequalities since apartheid ended are rooted in this paradox.

This blog post examines how the relationship between traditional leadership and formal state institutions, one aspect of a larger network of factors, contributed to the underdevelopment of Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld.

Bophuthatswana Periphery: Labour Reserves Disguised as Independent Territories

Bophuthatswana exemplifies apartheid’s contradictory development logic. Promoted as a self-governing Tswana homeland, the apartheid state retained de facto control over its governance, land, and economy (Jones, 1999).

Townships on the periphery like Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld functioned as labour reserves for industrial hubs such as Rosslyn, itself created through decentralisation policies that attempted—and ultimately failed—to incentivise industry away from white urban concentrations (Cowley & Lemon, 1986).

However, proximity to industrial zones did not translate into local development for these townships. Rather, weak institutions, poor infrastructure, and externally driven economic activity entrenched dependency. Despite post-apartheid policy efforts to promote local industrial clustering and urban development, these underdevelopment patterns persist (Rogerson, 1999; Todes & Turok, 2018).

Traditional Leadership and Political Economies of Underdevelopment

A key theme in my PhD research on Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld is the role of traditional leadership in reproducing this underdevelopment. Through the Promotion of Black Self-Government Act, the apartheid regime institutionalised tribal authorities and granted chiefs wide-ranging powers over land allocation, dispute resolution, and governance (Battersby, 1994; Khunou, 2009).

These leaders became essential intermediaries for the apartheid state. In exchange for loyalty, they gained unchecked authority, often absent from traditional accountability mechanisms (Magagane, 2021). In Bophuthatswana, Chief Lucas Mangope’s authoritarian regime combined political patronage with repression, undermining democratic governance and further fragmenting peri-urban areas like Winterveld, which had large non-Tswana populations (Segola, 1972).

Fragmented Urbanisation and Dependent Industrialisation

Contrasting urbanisation trajectories of Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld reveal how apartheid fractured Black urban life. Ga-Rankuwa benefited from more formal urban planning, while Winterveld grew through informal settlement, particularly among non-Tswana residents excluded from the homeland bureaucracy, before formal urban development plans were drafted in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, both townships remained economically dependent on and critical to the Minerals-Energy Complex(MEC)—the backbone of apartheid’s racial capitalism (Fine & Rustomjee, 1996). These linkages to the MEC occurred without local developmental benefits, as the majority of the rents and value created from these industries remained concentrated among white Afrikaner capitalists, exacerbating underdevelopment on the periphery of Bophuthatswana.

Post-Apartheid Spatial Integration and Governance Tensions

Post-1994 reforms sought to spatially, economically, and institutionally reintegrate fragmented territories. Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld were absorbed into the Gauteng province, part of a broader “spatial metamorphosis” aimed at correcting past exclusions (see Figure 1; Mkhize & Khanyile, 2021).

Figure 1: Spatial metamorphosis of the GCR in the post-apartheid period (Source: Mkhize & Khanyile,2021)

However, these attempted realignments introduced new tensions. The 2013 Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) shifted authority over land and development to municipalities. This sidelined traditional leaders who had previously exercised significant control, leading to ongoing friction and contestation (Iyer, 2018).

Despite state efforts to promote cooperative governance, tensions over land, legitimacy, and development remain unresolved, especially in areas where traditional authority continues to hold social capital (SALGA, 2013; Klaas-Makolomakwe & Reddy, 2020; Ramolobe, 2023). South Africa’s constitutional democracy has yet to fully reconcile the roles of traditional and elected authorities in peri-urban governance (Matsiliza, 2024).

Persistent Underdevelopment and Institutional Fragmentation

Winterveld continues to exemplify the long-term effects of institutional fragmentation. Even in the early democratic period, poor infrastructure, weak governance, and limited intergovernmental coordination were major obstacles to development (Rogerson, 1999). These challenges persist in township and informal economies, exacerbated by tensions between provincial actors, local councillors, and development agencies (Grest, 2022). Interviews with institutional stakeholders highlighted that Ga-Rankuwa has faced similar challenges.

Traditional leaders, though formally weakened, remain influential in land governance and local politics, often operating outside formal municipal institutional structures. In places where their authority is culturally embedded, exclusion from planning processes has been shown to undermine implementation.

Reimagining Inclusive Urban-Industrial Development in Peripheral Economies

Achieving inclusive growth in South Africa’s urban peripheries requires more than spatial or industrial integration—it also demands institutional collaboration. The cases of Ga-Rankuwa and Winterveld, however, illustrate the enduring power of traditional leaders in the political, economic, and social structures of peri-urban areas.

Rather than bypassing them, policymakers should create cooperative conditions for land governance, shared planning, and participatory urban-industrial development. By bridging formal and informal systems through negotiated power-sharing, once labour-exploiting spaces can be transformed into engines of sustainable development.

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Offline References

Cowley, J., & Lemon, A. (1986). Bophuthatswana: Dependent development in a black “homeland”. Geography, 71(3), 252–255.

Fine, B., & Rustomjee, Z. (1996). The political economy of South Africa: From minerals–energy complex to industrialisation. London: Hurst & Company.

Grest, J. (1988/2022). The crisis of local government in South Africa. In P. Frankel, N. Pines, & M. Swilling (Eds.), State, resistance and change in South Africa (pp. 87–116). Routledge.

Lipton, M. (1985). Capitalism and apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1984. Aldershot, England: Gower/M.T. Smith.

Murray, C. (1981). Families divided: The impact of migrant labour in Lesotho (Vol. 29, African Studies Series). Cambridge University Press.

Posel, D. (1991). The making of apartheid 1948–1961: Conflict and compromise. Oxford University Press.

Segola, I. (1972, August 24). Chief refuses to comment on tribalism slur. Rand Daily Mail, p. 4.

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