ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the relationship between cultural policy and urban public life in South Africa. It starts by giving an overview of post-apartheid cultural policy, drawing out some of the key ideological assumptions and contestations that underpin the sector. The chapter goes on to explore three terrains where cultural and urban policy logics coalesce and collide related to: policy, implementation and governance; creative cities, creative economies and culture-led development; and history, heritage and nationalist agendas. It explores how cultural policy largely foreground an inequitable cultural economy, which perpetuates a cultural elite that remains disproportionally White; second, they run the risk of essentialising, fixing and preserving simplistic notions of cultural tradition and heritage; preserving colonial architecture and artefacts; and supporting new, often very expensive, nationalist agendas. It concludes by drawing on what projects such as Public Art and the Power of Place can offer cultural and urban policy in and for South Africa and the global South.