The exploration of appropriate informal settlement intervention in South Africa : contributions from a comparison with Brazil
This study examines the hypothesis that informal settlement intervention in South Africa is trapped in a market-oriented paradigm of standardised housing delivery that cannot appropriately address the complex reality of informal settlement. I approach this hypothesis through a cross-national comparison between South Africa and Brazil. Underlying this choice of methodology is the realisation that current informal settlement intervention in Brazil differs considerably from South Africa, despite broad parallels in socio-political process throughout the 20th century. I introduce the contrast between informal settlement intervention in South Africa and Brazil, by situating the debates and practice in each of the two countries in relation to those presented in the international literature. I then explore the causes of this contrast through a socio-political comparison of the emergence of informal settlements in the two countries throughout the 20th century, and of·the responses to informal settlement from the various sectors of society, as portrayed in the South African and Brazilian literature respectively. This insight into the evolution of government intervention approaches in South Africa, as opposed to Brazil, gives a critical perspective to the South African situation. It enables me to expose the dominance of the market-oriented paradigm in current scholarly debates on informal settlement intervention in South Africa. It also enables me to expose the impact of this intervention paradigm on the strategies of organised informal settlement communities. For this purpose, four case studies of informal settlements undergoing intervention through the current South African framework were compiled through in-depth interviewing of key role-players in the development process.
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