Keywords

Around the world, where there are mountains, there are human settlements. Yet, mostly it is not possible for mountains to sustain intense human activities in steep or rugged terrain, leading to concentrations of infrastructure and settlements in foothills and valleys. These societies remain strongly interconnected with the mountain features of the wider landscape, which shape culture, social organization and economies. Although mountains offer many natural resources, they present unique and challenging environments, with extreme and fast-changing weather, multiple natural hazards and remote or isolated territories. These conditions often result in human communities that are both resilient and innovative with a strong local identity (Price 2013).

Mountain cities across the globe, and in particular those in developing regions, share common problems relating to their mountain setting. The rugged topography complicates infrastructure and service delivery as well as impedes mobility and thus connectivity. Historically, the industrialisation of countries has triggered migration flows away from mountain settlements (villages, towns, cities) as investments were focused in easily-accessible lowlands. Employment opportunities are therefore fewer in the mountains. Traditional livelihoods are typically agriculture-based, but mountain producers are often unable to compete in increasingly globalised commodity markets. In addition, agriculture-based livelihoods are sensitive to climate change and biodiversity loss and often the financial resources and technical know-how needed for adequate adaptation are limited. With services and employment increasingly concentrated in lowlands, many mountain settlements across the globe are experiencing trends of depopulation.

In some areas of the Global North however, the opposite is true, and people are returning to rural mountain areas to ‘escape’ dense metropolitan areas, and in response to unprecedented challenges for urban areas, as was seen in some places during the COVID-19 pandemic (Ahrend et al. 2022). In future, many lowland cities will become increasingly uninhabitable due urban heat island affect and sea-level rise (IPCC 2022). There are therefore signs, globally and currently in particular in wealthier regions, of a possible reversal of the abandonment of mountain areas, especially where mountains can offer essential services and economic opportunities for those who decide to stay or those who emigrate to mountains (Membretti and Lardies-Bosque 2022).

Phuthaditjhaba—the South African mountain city that is the subject of this book—not only shares the challenges of a mountain city but also that of an informal and rapidly growing city. This interaction creates a set of societal challenges relating to the growing population, high levels of inequality and demands for social justice, entrenched poverty, natural resource degradation and water and food insecurity. These circumstances, which are all also intertwined with the complex social and political history of the region, have been additionally aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Phuthaditjhaba: A Ruralopolis in the ‘QwaQwa Sandwich’

Phuthaditjhaba—the former capital of the Apartheid homeland of QwaQwa—sits at 1,600 masl, in the foothills of the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains where the surrounding peaks reaching over 3,000 masl. It is in the Free State province of South Africa and borders KwaZulu-Natal province and the national border with Lesotho (Fig. 1.1). It is a vast settlement of approximately 200 km2 that lacks a real urban centre and is instead characterised by a scattering of mostly small, single-storey, residential buildings that extend up the mountain slopes and across the hilly areas. Many inhabitants of this semi-urban sprawl depend on agriculture and pastoralism for subsistence or income, hence the conceptualisation of Phuthaditjhaba as a ruralopolis—comprising aspects of both rural and urban organisation, culture and economy (Qadeer 2000). Other important sectors providing employment are social services, private households, manufacturing and trade (both formal and informal), nevertheless, unemployment is around 50% and many households depend on government grants (MaP 2019). Meanwhile, the sectors with the highest economic contribution are ‘wholesale and retail trade, catering and accommodation’ (23.35%) and ‘general government’ (23.05%) (Denoon-Stevens and Mocwagae 2019).

Fig. 1.1
figure 1

Map showing the location of Phuthaditjhaba in southern Africa. Map creator: Stefano Terzi

Full size image

Phuthaditjhaba is overshadowed by the nearby peaks of the Great Escarpment range, including the Drakensberg Amphitheatre with the Tugela falls, the second highest waterfall in the world, and Sentinel Peak. The city thus stands in a setting of exceptional natural beauty. However, these mountains limit the spatial expansion of the city to the west and south, while the rest of the city is encircled by protected conservation areas and private-owned farmland. These restrictions to urban expansion led to the nickname of the ‘QwaQwa sandwich’ (Delves et al. 2021).

The Mountains and the City

The city and its people are not only shaped by its complex historical, political, social and cultural past and present, but also by the mountain environment that surrounds it. Phuthaditjhaba depends on the mountains for fresh water, for pasture and cropland, and regionally also for tourism, energy production, biodiversity conservation and carbon capture.

The rugged and mountainous terrain makes infrastructural development and service provision both difficult and costly (Fig. 1.2). Inadequate service provision, in particular water, is one factor driving ongoing civil discontent which frequently manifests in protests, some of which cause damage to property and infrastructure, as was the case in 2019–2020 ‘QwaQwa Shutdown’ protests (Toyana 2020). However, Phuthaditjhaba is located in southern Africa’s primary water producing region, and a lack of water for domestic use is often blamed on poor municipal management, lack of investment and corruption in service contract allocation (Mocwagae 2020). In February 2018, the local municipality was placed under administration for financial mismanagement and refusing to make public its financial records.

Fig. 1.2
figure 2

The Maloti-Drakensberg mountains form a dramatic backdrop to the Phuthaditjhaba ‘ruralopolis’. Photo credit: Serero Modise

Full size image

Increasing Remoteness or ‘Remotization’

Since democracy, the city has undergone a process of ‘remotization’ (Membretti et al. 2022a, b), that is, an increasing isolation from other economic and cultural centres of the country. During Apartheid, economic incentives were provided by the national government to encourage the establishment of white-owned businesses and job creation in the QwaQwa homeland (see Chap. 2, Marais). The city was a bureaucratic and administrative centre, with adequate investment in services, infrastructure and education. In 1994 QwaQwa was reintegrated into South Africa and by extension into global markets; the subsidies to white-owned businesses ended and South African trade unions won farer wages and working conditions for their workers. With cheaper labour available elsewhere, industry all but left Phuthaditjhaba and unemployment dramatically increased.

The challenges faced in Phuthaditjhaba are similar to those in many expanding informal urban areas in the developing world: the inequalities rooted in colonialism and neocolonialism, leading to underinvestment in services, to unemployment and poverty, with all the associated impacts on human and ecological well-being. In addition, the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, human migration and COVID-19 pandemic on Phuthaditjhaba are still under-researched but will play a strong role in the future of the city (Schneiderbauer et al. 2022). All this said, the very location of Phuthaditjhaba at the foot of the Great Escarpment and Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains and in close proximity to a significant, yet fragile, system rich environmental resources, highlights the great potential of this place in terms of sustainable development. For sustainable development to be possible, policies are needed to radically remove inequalities in access to these resources, together with establishing formal measures for their responsible and sustainable management.

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

This edited volume presents a practical discussion about sustainable development in Phuthaditjhaba which is facing multilevel social, political and environmental challenges. By employing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) throughout, the Goals serve as a common reference point which unites the written contributions and which can be employed by researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike. The book brings together diverse contributions from scholars and practitioners on Phuthaditjhaba and the area of the former homeland QwaQwa. Each chapter addresses the city from a different disciplinary perspective, with the overall objective of shedding light on the challenges and opportunities presented with regards to sustainable development.

Phuthaditjhaba and QwaQwa are frequently referred to as ‘under-researched’. This turns out to be a falsehood; there is plenty of important and innovative research taking place in and on the city and its surroundings. However, much of this research never reaches international forums, for a variety of reasons (see Box 3: Conducting research in Phuthaditjhaba: challenges and opportunities). A key motivation for this publication is therefore to showcase the variety and quality of the research on Phuthaditjhaba as well as to contribute to raising the profile of southern Africa’s mountains—and their researchers and practitioners—in sustainability and development research internationally.

Chapters Summaries

Chapter 2—Lochner Marais

Marais explains the origins of the apartheid homelands system with particular reference to the homeland of QwaQwa in which Phuthaditjhaba, declared as the capital city, is located. The chapter explores the principal obstacles to progress and reflects on what city planners could do to promote sustainable development in the region.

Chapter 3—Kgosi Mocwagae and Verna Nel

Mocwagae & Nel link a need for participatory urban planning to successfully address the sustainable economic development of Phuthaditjhaba and its central business district (CBD). This qualitative study involved municipal officials, homeowners, business owners and property developers in an investigation of the Setsing CBD, a focal point of Phuthaditjhaba’s economic, social and cultural life.

Chapter 4—Falko Buschke, Toka Mosikidi, Aliza le Roux, Lefu Mofokeng and Bram Vanschoenwinkel

Buschke et al. argue that biodiversity should be foregrounded as an important element of all local level decisions and explain how existing biodiversity plans of the Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality can be repurposed to address seven of the 17 UN SDGs.

Chapter 5—Dolapo Bola Adelabu and Angelinus Cornelius Franke

Adelabu and Franke demonstrate how bees can be managed to play a greater role in increasing crop yields in resource poor communities where the use of chemical fertilizers is limited due to a lack of finance of smallholder famers.

Chapter 6—Geofrey Mukwada and Sarudzai Mutana

Mukwada and Mutana assess the impact of urban drought on water security in Phuthaditjhaba and use historical climate data to determine how climate change has affected the two main dams which supply the city’s water. They find that water supply is decreasing which poses a long term problem to water security in the region.

Chapter 7—Ntebohiseng Sekhele and Patricks Voua Otomo

Sekhele and Otomo explain how a chronic lack of water generates conflict in the region and contributes to ongoing poverty. They highlight the contradiction that Phuthaditjhaba sits in an important water-producing region but suffers from poor water availability, and suggest ways the city can tackle this growing crisis.

Chapter 8—Kgosi Mocwagae and Thulisile Mphambukeli

Mocwagae & Mphambukeli investigate the 2019–2020 water crisis that took place across QwaQwa, using data from a questionnaire administered to 571 households. The chapter uses these data to propose planning interventions for improved water access and provision in the region.

Chapter 9—Loice S. Nzombe, Rodwell Makombe and Oliver Nyambi

Nzombe, Makombe & Nyambi address gender and youth issues in Phuthaditjhaba through their investigation of self-representation of female bodies on social media in the (re)construction of identities. Their chapter offers a unique contribution to a field not often dealt with in the context of semi-urban spaces and systemic underdevelopment.

Chapter 10—Sarudzai Mutana and Geofrey Mukwada

Mutana & Mukwada discuss to what extent tourism could become an important pillar of sustainable development in Phuthaditjhaba in the future, bringing employment and economic revenue. They argue that the mountains hold potential for sustainable forms of tourism but that the fledgling industry currently lacks balance between economic, environmental and sociocultural benefits.

Chapter 11—Susan Jean Taylor

Taylor reflects on multiple urban greening benefits, thinking ahead to a climate change future where increased temperatures will negatively impact physical and mental health of urban residents. To counter this, she proposes a vast urban greening project in Phuthaditjhaba to combat the urban heat island effect and provide employment and even food for local communities.

Chapter 12—Louw van Biljon

Van Biljon explores the possibilities of a more creative town planning approach in Phuthaditjhaba, presenting a visionary imagining of the city 100 years hence, in 2121. Using the UN SDGs and three case studies as a guide, van Biljon rethinks planning goals which include communities for a sustainable future in Phuthaditjhaba.