ABSTRACT
The transition from apartheid in Johannesburg has meant that power in this divided city is more contested than ever before. Notwithstanding the acceptance of promising redistributive frameworks of reconstruction, poverty and inequality in Johannesburg are far from being reduced. Erstwhile anti-apartheid activists and ‘comrades’ have very rapidly had to make the transition from opposition and struggle politics to the grind of organizational change. Equally, long-standing city officials from the apartheid era have had to adapt to very different visions for the city. Ongoing urbanization, regional immigration, national emigration and economic sluggishness serve to compound the problems of reconstruction and the contradictions bequeathed by the previous dispensation. The task facing the new Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council (GJMC) is not aided by the presence of a powerful commercial and residential elite who, while not overly demanding of the local state, are reluctant to contribute any further to the needs of the poor. Against a backdrop of fiscal stasis, issues of poverty reduction and redistribution are still under negotiation. The harsh realities of intra-racial inequalities that were hidden beneath the racial hierarchy of apartheid are beginning to reveal themselves. This means that it is imperative that Johannesburg's political leaders and managers begin to move beyond the racial discourse of the political struggle against apartheid in order to confront the changing structural base of inequality within the city, as well.
