Governing mining towns: the case of Lephalale

Abstract:South Africa's failure to transform the spatial geography of apartheid has been centrally attributed to policy failure. Drawing on empirical research in Lephalale, a town in South Africa's Limpopo province, this article looks at the intersection between local government, spatial planning and mining companies in undoing the disintegrated apartheid geographies. It argues that understanding the failure to bridge the divided landscape requires not only a consideration of policy frameworks and issues of capacity building but, importantly, also a knowledge of the history and geography of local government institutions and the public-private interface within which policy strategies operate.