The generation of competencies and standards for planning in South Africa : Differing views

Since the founding of planning in South Africa fifty-two years ago, the statutory bodies governing the profession have not set the competencies and standards in order to create a framework for curriculum development, the accreditation of schools, as well as the registration of planners and their professional practice. In 2010, the South African Council for Planners, a statutory body responsible for the regulation and quality assurance of the planning profession, initiated a process of generating Competencies and Standards to deal with the many challenges that had arisen as a result of the lack of the framework. The generation of a set of Competencies and Standards has stimulated much debate in the corridors of higher learning and between the Council and other related professional bodies in the built environment. This article first traces the motivating factors for the initiation of the Competencies and Standards process; secondly, it examines the history of this process; thirdly, it discusses the debatable issues raised in the various interactive workshops during the process. And lastly, it identifies the achievements of the process. The thrust of argument in the article is that the Competencies and Standards process marks a significant step towards curriculum reform, but more engagement will be required to facilitate transformation in the planning profession.


INTRODUCTION
Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well (Fanon, 1965: 36).
In every era the attempt must be made to wrest tradition away from a conformist that is about to overpower it (Benjamin, 1969: 255).
There can be no transformation of the curriculum, or indeed of knowledge itself, without an interrogation of the archive (Ndebele, 2000: online).
These three quotations highlight the pressing need to wrestle with our knowledge traditions in order to transform the planning profession from time to time.Between 2010 and 2014, the South African Council for Planners (SACPLAN) embarked on an arduous journey of generating Competencies and Standards (C&S) for the Planning profession. 1 A team of facilitators was appointed to undertake the exercise.The facilitators consisted of two academics who had a wide and deep experience in teaching and practice in the planning profession.The facilitators managed to develop a framework for the C&S towards reaffirming the professional status of planning in the built environment.The engagements with the stakeholders  , 2002).
in different workshops around the country, however, revealed many challenges militating against transformation in the profession.Some of the challenges have a long and deep history going back to the founding of planning in the country.
This article is based on a collection of materials from various consultative workshops held around the country during the process of developing the C&S (see Table 1).Some of the material is drawn from public reports written by the facilitators for the Council and from comments made by various stakeholders that are in the public domain.Some of the information is drawn from newsletters, newspapers and informal discussions as well as personal observations.The author was a council member and was personally involved in the C&S generation project.Therefore, the narrative is inevitably subjective to a degree.The approach of the article is historical, reflective and analytical; however, it does not identify subjects of opinion makers, unless they spoke in an official capacity.
The article addresses the following questions: • What are the motivating factors to the initiation of

HISTORICAL MOTIVATING FACTORS FOR THE GENERATION OF COMPETENCIES AND STANDARDS
Since the advent of planning in Africa, theory and models for urban development were largely transferred from Europe and America and overlaid on African traditional systems that were arguably unprepared for the new systems of housing, standards, public services, and development control procedures that were characterized by topdown approaches (Ndura, 2006;Shalaby, 2003: 15;Smyth, 2004).
The approach to planning in general was influenced by early planning in Britain 2 and was concerned with public health and safety.It stressed 'efficiency concerns' and was dominated by the scientific approach of architects and engineers, who held the view that all planning problems had technical solutions (McCarthy & Smit, 1984). in general supported the state ideology of separate development.Therefore, they were viewed as the 'handmaidens' and 'soft cops' of the apartheid state (Davies, 1981).To a large degree, planners lost credibility in the public eye, due to their involvement in projects driven by the apartheid government.Invariably, this left the country with an indelible structure of fragmented cities marked by racial and income divisions and inequalities (Lemon, 1991;Mabin, 1992;Parnell, 1993).

Towards the establishment of a Standards Generating Body
Therefore, the impetus for development of C&S in the planning profession was discernible at the dawn of democracy in 1994.Todes and Harrison (2004: 188) noted that conferences were held to chart the way forward for the profession in 1995(DPASA, 1995;;RDP Office, 1995).The initial attempt to develop competency standards was undertaken by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), which was established through the South African Qualifications Standards Act (No. 58 of 1995). 3In terms of this statute, SAQA's responsibility was to develop and implement policy and criteria for recognizing professional bodies and register them for the purposes of generating competency standards that adhere to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). 4The NQF provides a framework that sets out the boundaries of a standardised qualification system, in order to recognise skills and categorise them according to a unified structure of recognised qualifications.Accordingly, a Standards Generating Body (SGB)  (2008) points out that it was agreed that SACPLAN would play a leading role in driving the C&S process following the registration.The intention was to set up a team drawing from the SAQA, and the SGB Task Team made up of town planning experts (JIPSA, 2008) to undertake the process.
The SACPLAN consolidated report (2014a: 23) points out that the first plenary meeting of the Planning SGB was held on 15 August 2006.This was followed by a scoping workshop with the Heads of Planning Schools, held on 7 November 2006 in Durban (SACPLAN, 2014d: 3).
The purpose of the workshop was to identify specialised skills and competencies relating to Town and Regional Planning.The SACPLAN consolidated report (2014a: 23) indicates that the workshop participants did not agree on some of the basic tenets of the process, many of which were drawn from the example of experience of the Quantity Surveying profession.
Although some knowledge domains, competencies and skills were generated at this meeting, there was no real ability to tackle competencies in relation to level descriptors and critical-cross-field outcomes, nor was any international benchmarking done (SACPLAN, 2014a: 23).
On 5 October 2007, the Government gazetted a new Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF), which outlined the new requirements for the setting up of academic qualifications and courses.The Gazette (Government Notice No. 928) noted that "[s]eparate and parallel qualifications structures for universities and technicians have hindered the articulation of programmes and transfer of students between programmes and higher education institutions…" and so required the "need for a single qualifications framework applicable to all higher education institutions" (RSA, 2007).The new framework amended the old framework in terms of NQF levels and credits per qualification, and required the Masters to be offered as a one-year qualification. 5 These changes sparked a flame of discussions among planning schools about compliance.A meeting was held at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, regarding the new HEQF alignment on defining the core competencies for planning.This meeting sought to explore a common mechanism for responding to the new national requirements.However, the effort was eclipsed by the call for nominations of new members for SACPLAN who had a mandate to take this responsibility (JIPSA, 2008).In the same year, Wendy Ovens and Associates (consultants) drew up a set of competencies as part of a JIPSA study (Wendy Ovens & Associates, 2007).
The report provided an array of competencies categorised for planning as well as those that are shared with other disciplines.
5 Diversion from this should be accompanied by explanation.
The report has been a major point of reference and comparison in the subsequent development of competency standards.

Challenges of the profession in the 1990s and 2000s
No tangible policy changes were introduced by the Council in the 1990s and 2000s.The understanding and perception of planning still left much to be desired.Parnell and Robinson (2006)  Invariably, planners have been found to be working on behalf of the market and are often complicit or behind the large swathes of displacement of people that are poor in the major cities of the country in the postapartheid era (Watson, 2009: 163).This has signified that the group of planners that saw themselves as inheritors of the advocacy tradition of planning in the 1970s and 1980s has disappeared or is disappearing.Instead, activism has been replaced by 'profits' and so some planners have become the 'handmaidens of global capitalism'.
The dominance of the market has also drawn planners into other disciplines such that the "planning profession has increasingly become part of a larger multidisciplinary profession in the built environment and has lost its voice and autonomy" (Harrison et al., 2004: 197).Apparently, areas of focus such as housing, project management, community development, local economic development, and public management have become part of planning and planning has become part of them (Harrison et al., 2004: 197).Ultimately, it was clear that the regulatory system to ensure high quality of planning skills and to regulate the profession were in a state of flux (Todes & Mngadi, 2007: 7).This lacuna generated a huge wave of despondency among planners in the late 1990s and 2000s.Many planners did not perceive the value of professional registration, due to the weak system of accountability in the profession.Harrison and Kahn (2002) observed that membership of the South African Planning Institution (SAPI), the professional planning organisation, dropped from 1,100 in 1996 to 300 in 2001.By the early 2000s, the effective 'de-professionalization' of planning became a concern for both SACPLAN and SAPI (Todes & Mngadi, 2007: 7).

SACPLAN IS 'REINVENTING PLANNING' AND 'CHANGING LIVES'
Following the inauguration of the second Council (SACPLAN 2) in 2008, the Council members developed a vision statement -"Reinventing Planning, Changing Lives".In working towards reinventing planning, SACPLAN re-initiated the process of generating C&S as the benchmark against which the challenges of the profession highlighted earlier could be addressed.SACPLAN's (2011: 3) Bulletin states that the purpose of the process was to ensure that practices, skills, knowledge and related policies in the country respond effectively to the planning needs of the profession.

Three phases of the project
The procurement of the project was divided into three phases.Phase 1 involved the production of a report based on a status quo analysis in January 2010.This involved the review of different research initiatives for extracting core issues as well as the identification of international experience in the identification of competencies. Phase

The identification of competencies
A group of three sets of related competencies were identified, namely generic, core, and functional competencies.Generic competencies are the essential skills, attributes and behaviours that are considered important for all planners, regardless of their function or level (SACPLAN, 2014b: 12).These are the basic competencies that are common to all disciplines.They are also called mandatory competencies based on the requirements and expectations on personal, interpersonal, professional practice, and business aptitude (Trinder, 2008: 166) requirement for Professional Planner status remains unchanged.The Council has also adopted two new awards for its membership, namely a Fellow and an Honorary status.
A Fellow membership is awarded to registered planners who have rendered outstanding services to the profession.The Honorary status will be awarded to an individual who is not a registered planner, but who has made a significant contribution to the planning profession.Both awards will be based on a nomination and an appraisal process (SACPLAN, 2014c: 13).

Meaning of planning
In the workshops, the generic competencies were easily received; however, different parties contested the core and functional competencies.Much of the contestation was fuelled by different views on the understanding of planning.They were planners who viewed planning in terms of traditional town planning.The use of the term 'traditional town planning' is associated with a physical site, region, territory and boundary, which imply, at least on first thought, a static account of geography (Capello, 2011).To this group, town planning subscribes to the Kantian claims of an objective criterion where space is a container.Thus, for these planners, C&S implies an exercise that is meant to preserve the historically inherited traditions of planning -implicitly "a revitalization of old British modernist planning which viewed town planning essentially as an exercise of physical design" (Taylor, 1999: 330).
Invariably, planning was viewed as a technical process concerned with land use in terms of the standards, codes and instruments prescribed in legislative and policy documents.
The group wanted to develop core and functional competencies with a strong physical planning focus and an organisational logic that emphasised legal and structural order to ensure compliance.Hence, the group was also calling for quantitative specifications for the competency requirements, in order to enforce compliance of curriculum designs to the C&S framework of planning schools.They wanted them marked by clear quantities of scope, coverage and measures.
As such, the initial proposals of the accreditation guidelines were based on a quantitative matrix that specified quantitative specifications for minimum requirements to define compliance.This was met with a huge rejection from CHoPS and other planners.These objectors wanted the competencies to be set in a flexible manner, using qualitative statements.This group generally espoused the concept of planning in terms of 'urban planning'.Unlike the view of fixating planning in a territory, the inference from the concept of 'urban planning' was the sense of territoriality -the idea that "there is no such thing as a boundary … Every space is in constant motion…" (Thrift, 2006: 140, 141).This view recognises that places are porous to a greater or lesser degree.Therefore, space is not only physical, but is also made up of complex cultural constructions of space constituted by networks, multiplicity and diversity.This group reckoned with the notion of the spatial turn -"the move away from a 'container' image of space towards an acknowledgment of its mutability and social production" (Kümin & Usborne, 2013: 317).It is "the idea that space appears as both matter and meaning, as simultaneously tangible and intangible, and constitutive of social circumstances and physical landscapes" (Arias, 2010: 29).

Reservation of planning work
These opposing views precipitated much of their influence on the highly debated issue of the 'reservation of planning work'.As KENA Consult (2015: 25) asserted in a position paper for planning: Overall, the cornerstone of professionalization entails work reservation to protect the public at large and the members within the profession.All professions identify with a specific field of work and its related functions based on a system of work reservation.
The alternative view of the urban planners was not an objection to reservation of work, but rather a support for broadening the agenda of planning in recognition of the fact that planning is "an activity that involves other professionals (architects, engineers, lawyers)" (Neuman, 2005: 124).This view accepts reservation of work, but argues that it is through the stipulation of professional standards rather than the identification of strict and narrow categories of planning work.This is in view of the fact that "[u]rban planning is hard to define and harder to practice because it is the unsteady, always renegotiated resolution of a number of contradictions, paradoxes, and tensions" (Fischler, 2011: 108).
The Wits and Cape Town universities' comments, for example, state: We would argue that narrowing the agenda for planning is contrary to the interests of promoting sustainable and inclusive places, and it is contrary to the recommendations for a more developmental approach to planning made by international organizations such as UN-Habitat, the Commonwealth Association of Planners, and the resolutions of several of the South African Planning Institute's Planning Africa Conferences since 2002 .... we are concerned that planners might be pushed out of these more developmental areas of work, and 'planning' might be seen again as a narrow technical activity for which it has been so widely criticized internationally. 15

Master's qualification
While this controversy between the different professions was motivated by the intractable interdisciplinary nature of the planning profession, there was also tension among

Bachelor of Technology qualification
The

Experiential learning
The issue of time spent in class versus out of class was also discussed in terms of distance education.Some argue that distance learning in planning will be instrumental in the empowerment of disadvantaged communities and facilitate more access to planning education, especially to those who are employed.They proposed that it would save resources, e.g., space for facilities and open opportunities to those who want to study at their own pace.While others were not opposing the idea, they raised concerns that self-instructional material is not enough to teach planning.They argued that modules are not pedagogically adequate to teach planning, since it is a practical subject that necessitates experiential learning.They recognised that many people on the African continent do not have the appropriate technological facilities for distance education.Even those who do encounter difficulties.Supporting services (e.g., electricity) are often unreliable and/or unavailable.One senior planner was concerned that "distance education is likely to benefit the privileged sections in society and maintain planning to be an elitist discipline and in the hands of people who are not fully connected with the practical needs of the continent".For this planner, "the motif (of distance learning) might as well be that we are producing graduates that can only plan for the first world" (Singh, 2009: personal communication).

International accreditation
Invariably, similar sentiments have been central to the emphasis on 'local content', 'local systems', and 'local perspectives' often laced on arguments for Africanisation of education (Makgoba & Seepe, 2004).These have been associated with cultural politics concerned with enabling ways of representing the Black Africans and promoting their capacities and social forms in the field of education.They have also opposed suggestions that degree programmes should embrace international accreditation from associations such as the Royal

Significance of the debates
These debates have implications for curriculum development, accreditation of schools, registration of planners, and professional practice.
• All planning schools will recalibrate their curricula, ensuring that the intricate connections between technical and theoretical knowledge contended in these debates move away from theoretically totalizing and pedagogically oppressive curricula.Planning schools will ensure that curriculum development becomes a vital force in shaping transformation of the planning mind, space, practice, and society.• The Council will now utilise a planning discipline-specific set of criteria in the accreditation of schools, one that is intelligible to the planning profession in terms of its C&S for every planning qualification.Every school will meet a set of minimum C&S in their different fields of specialisation to facilitate meeting the needs of society and the industry.• As a result, the registration of planners through a new examination system will develop a professional body of planners with skills and knowledge to transform society towards a democratic society.The approval of the legislation will prevent non-planners from taking planning jobs.• The Planning professional practice should then be the ambit of registered planners only who can undertake work that is reserved for planners in terms of the legislation.

CONCLUSION
Unfortunately, the implementation of some of the policies adopted will not happen immediately.Some of the policies such as examination guidelines for registration, RPL and CPD require the setting up of structures (e.g., a coordinating board) before they can be implemented.Others will require the amendment of the legislation in parliament before they are implemented (e.g., new categories of registration).Most importantly, it is crucial to note that there are larger issues of decoloniality and transformation that still need attention in South Africa and in the planning profession, in particular.Sewpaul (2007: 17) has pertinently observed that, [g]iven the impact of over 300 years of colonialism and almost 50 years of apartheid, there can be no denial that a Western hegemony has become inscribed into South African society and our academic institutions.There is, unarguably, a need for an emancipatory pedagogy to develop an ethos of scholarship that overcomes colonial mental slavery, and one that addresses local and national context-specific realities while being cognisant of, and responsive to, international issues and the multifaceted consequences of globalisation.Heleta (2016) (2003), grand narratives do not problematize their own legitimacy; instead, they deny the historical and social construction of their own first principles and, in doing so, negate the importance of difference, contingency and particularity.It goes without saying that SACPLAN has been consciously and unconsciously influenced by, and in turn influences, and becomes constitutive of these dominant paradigms and ideologies.
In order to untangle the link between this dominant knowledge and power, there is a need to interrogate and demystify the interests that informed these knowledge forms so that knowledge is not inexorably given and self-justified.Therefore, the Council needs to undertake research, in order to explore how the total body of the profession situates itself in the intersection of language, culture, power, and history, the nexus in which subjectivities of planners are created during their training and professional practice.A programme of continuous research needs to be undertaken to ensure that the dialectical processes of understanding, criticising and transforming are germane to the democratic transformation of the profession.It should lead to the construction of new forms of subjectivities, social relations, and institutional formations that are more hospitable to human rights, equality and social justice.Such a research requires a critical perspective that demands that the processes of curriculum development, accreditation, registration, and so on be interrogated together with the ideological location of the Council itself.Ultimately, SACPLAN's realisation of transformation will always rely on its ability to mobilise different stakeholders in the planning profession to come together and debate constructively, because C&S' generation is an ongoing process.

Table 1 :
List of workshops for the Competency and Standards Generation project NB. Information was forwarded by SACPLAN and compiled from a record of meeting requests.
notes that South African universities have not considerably changed; they remain rooted in colonial, apartheid and Western worldviews and epistemological traditions.The high-status of Eurocentric knowledge has become the dominant kind of knowledge deemed immutable enough in the planning curricula of universities in South Africa.The subjugated knowledges of economically disadvantaged groups, women, and minorities are insistently marginalised.For Lyotard