The Politics of Territory and Place in Post-apartheid South Africa: the Disputed Area of Bushbuckridge

The new-found democracy in post-apartheid South Africa was bound to confront the legacies of apartheid, one of which was the segregated spaces designed to foster a separate existence of different officially defined racial and ethnic groups. As apartheid came to an end and a negotiated settlement ensued in 1992, attention was paid to the reorganisation of society and its spaces in line with the vision of a non-racial democratic South Africa. Attempts to reorganise the apartheid territorial divisions by means of new boundaries created some new problems. This paper analyses the provincial boundary dispute between Mpumalanga and Northern Province over Bushbuckridge which began in 1993 and remained unresolved at the end of 1998. It argues that the dispute is not only about the boundary in question but also about opportunities and constraints offered by the process of transformation. The Bushbuckridge boundary dispute became more pronounced after the 1994 national election, although the problem itself pre-dated the election. Its later complications can be primarily laid at the door of the African National Congress, as the leading player in the post-apartheid government.