Cities of Gold, Townships of Coal: Essays on the New South Afric

From the publisher:

"Bond and his colleagues have done a marvelous job of capturing the contradictions and dynamics behind South Africa's partial transition."
-- Iris Young, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

After apartheid was dismantled, South Africa's township residents anticipated a peace and development dividend. But as the African National Congress prepared for its second term in office (1999-2004), the cities had degenerated further into impoverished, polluted, under-serviced, zones of blight and despair.

Indeed in many respects - unemployment, municipal cut-offs of water and electricity, substandard housing, transport violence, and crime - the townships and inner-cities were worse off than when the ANC took power. Redistribution of urban resources was not seriously on the agenda, as wealthy white suburbanites successfully defended their privileges.

Overall, Patrick Bond argues, the ANC's adoption of neo-liberal (free-market) economic and social policies - at the urging of the World Bank, US AID and local financial institutions and business consultants - during a period of volatile global capital flows through financial and real estate markets, can be blamed for the current worsening of South Africa's uneven urban development.