Die verstedeliking van Ciskei

Abstract

The development plan for Ciskei, prepared in 1979, encompassed also a proposal for the urbanization of the country in the form of a hierarchical arrangement of service centres to ac­cord with a functional diversification programme. A logical basis for the proposal was derived from a study of location fac­tors and growth stimuli of the histori­cal settlements and the emergence of some of them as viable service centres. Two separate stages of urban settle­ment can be distinguished:
(a) The first phase runs parallel with the early European settlement of the area with the centres starting as mission stations in the densely occupied tribal areas, to be fallow­ed by military posts in central positions. Where these steps pro­ceeded successively at the same locations dynamic new villages emerged.
(b) In the second phase large-scale urbanization of Xhosas fallowed the shift from a subsistence econ­omy in rural areas to urban em­ployment. This process was ini­tiated by the founding of new towns on the borders to provide housing for labour employed in the industries across the border. This rapidly led to a ribbon of urbaniza­tion which stretches from King Williams Town to just short of East London.  Hopefully the internal industrializa­tion which is proposed in the develop­ment plan will give rise to a more even clustered settlement pattern across the country based on an internal central industrial complex.
*This article is written in Afrikaans.