A Comparative Analysis of Urban Growth and Development in Traditional Authority and Non-traditional Areas: the Case of Rustenburg and Mahikeng Municipalities in the North West Province, South Africa

Traditional authorities (TA) and democratically elected government structures have co-existed in South Africa since the democratic transition in 1994. This article compares growth and development trends and patterns of TA areas in relation to areas that do not fall within traditional authorities for two municipalities in South Africa. The comparative analysis deploys descriptive and multivariate techniques to compare three dimensions of growth and development: basic services and housing, socio-economic indicators and density measures. In 1996, statistically significant differences in the levels of development were evident in five of the 16 indicators considered, while this figure reduced to only four of the 16 indicators in 2001 and three in 2011. In addition, statistically significant differences in the rate of change were identified in only four of the 16 indicators. These four indicators are the growth in the proportion of households residing in formal housing (significantly higher in non-TA wards) and the three density indicators (all significantly higher in the non-TA wards). The results confirm a broadly convergent trend between the levels of development in TA and non-TA wards between 1996 and 2011. From an overall perspective, the findings of this research indicate that, based on a ward level analysis of a range of development indicators, traditional authorities in the two study areas did not impede growth and development between 1996 and 2011.