Planning in South Africa

White Paper on Spatial Planning and Land Use Management
Wise Land Use
Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs
July 2001
Contents
Foreword
Executive Summary

Points of Departure and background
Principles and norms for land use and management
Local spatial planning, land use management and land development
The integration and alignment of the roles and responsibilities of the different spheres of government
Annexures

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Foreword
Land is an asset. Land is scarce. Land is fragile.

These three statements reflect the basic relationships of humankind with land: social, economic and environmental. Humanity's association with land springs from the enduring nature of land: it is the basis of food, shelter and livelihood. The important insight is to realize that humanity must decide how negotiable the organizing principles of the linkages between society and the landscape are. Negotiable are the ways in which human society adapts to the constraints given by the natural system, and how people act in the landscape in their efforts to cope with the environmental pre-conditions while satisfying human needs and demands. These interactions more often than not happen in such an unwise fashion that the quantitative and qualitative sustainability of society itself may be undermined.

The provision of life-support systems require interferences with the landscape where the natural resources, like bio-mass, energy resources, minerals, water, land-space, are to be found. Physical interference in the land, like building, clearing and drainage, takes place, and chemical interferences are introduced: thus humanity creates its cultivated life-worlds on the earth.

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What is clear is that life-support of the population is a very basic, pro-active imperative expected from the leaders of society. Human activities in the landscape are not only driven by demands for...