Read the article below and answer ALL the questions that follow

Urban planning: our cities are at a crossroads

At the dawn of democracy, South Africa entered an exciting era during which urban and rural redevelopment interventions

were going to undo the manifestations of apartheid and colonialism through spatial and social integration. The

Development Facilitation Act $($DFA$)$ was among the first post$-$apartheid legislation designed for this purpose. Throughout

the country, national, provincial and local governments were focused on the role of integrated development planning as

the means towards renewed and integrated built environments. This represented the potential and ushering in of a golden

era for planning and planners which included a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission explaining the

role of the planning profession in addressing the spatial manifestation of apartheid.

Sadly, this golden era was short$-$lived when even the DFA was declared unconstitutional because, ironically, it gave

inordinate powers to provinces instead of municipalities where integration and renewal were meant to happen. It took

several years for the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act $($SPLUMA$)$ to become a reality, by which time

spatial inequalities through gated estates and shopping centres for the wealthy on the one end and the growing urban

poor being locked in townships through RDP housing on the other, became entrenched. Notwithstanding the SPLUMA

principles, growing spatial inequalities have worsened apartheid$$s spatial and social inequalities and new policies stating

the same goals of integration kept being reproduced even while successive administrations kept undermining them. Over

almost three decades the golden era of hope and anticipation for a new society in newly built environments came to a

disappointing end.

This disappointment seems to have driven former statistician$-$general Pali Lehohla recently to write: $$Confronted by the

monumental task of building a nation divided and devastated by apartheid, South Africa has indulged in a series of plans

$$ Reconstruction and Development $($RDP$),$ Growth, Employment and Redistribution $($Gear$),$ the Integrated Sustainable

Rural Development Programme $($ISRDP$),$ the Urban Renewal Programme $($URP$),$ the Accelerated and Shared Growth

Initiative for South Africa $($AsgiSA$),$ the New Growth Path, the National Development Plan $($NDP$),$ the Nine Point Plan, the

Fourteen Point Plan, the New Dawn, the Growth Renewal and Sustainability Plan, the Economic Recovery and

Reconstruction Plan, the District Development Model and attendant master plans, and Just Energy Transition. Fourteen

plans in three decades is a new toy for the nation every two years.$$ Cabinet also adopted the integrated Urban

Development Framework in $2016$ and the National Spatial Development Framework was gazetted in February $2023.$

This is the predictable pattern followed by all spheres of government, instead of reflecting on the failure to implement

policies, plans and strategies$$ they elect instead to have new ones which ultimately are the same as the previous ones.

Former president Thabo Mbeki was driven to say that the National Development Plan is not a plan at all, but merely a

framework. The National Planning Commission is likely to present us with another one by the end of its term.

As usual, successive administrations have not taken responsibility for their failures, blaming instead reactionaries,

sabotage and the shortage of professionals such as urban planners, engineers and architects. The roles played by

contradictory government policies, corrupt land use decisions and general public sector incompetence in implementing

post$-$apartheid visions are ignored. The problem is not limited to build environment professionals, as a large number of

unemployed newly qualified medical, engineering and teaching professionals show. It is an indictment of the bureaucracy

that qualified professionals are unemployed when the needs have been established and the budgets allocated

accordingly. The impact of basic incompetence and corrupt employment practices is pervasive across the country in all

public institutions. QUESTION $1(25$ Marks$)$

$1\mathrm{.}1.$It took several years for the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act $($SPUMA$)$ to become a

reality$.$ Why was SPLUMA developed and what factors led to delay in promulgation of the Act.

$(15$ marks$)$

$1\mathrm{.}2.$ The White Paper in Local Government emphasised the importance of the parcipatory governance.

Assess the gaps and challenges of RDP houses development process with reference to public participation.

$(10$ Marks$)$