Rural urban encounters in Swaziland: The peri-urban interface in Manzini City

Abstract

The explosive growth of cities in most developing countries has dramatically reduced the division between the urban and the rural creating the so-called peri-urban interface (PUI) or peri-urban areas. The supply of land in the peri-urban areas cannot be entirely separated from urban land supply since in many respects they are two sides of the same coin. The rural and urban interaction has increasingly diluted the divide between the traditional and the modern. Notably, approximately 11,9% of the land that occur in the Manzini-Mbabane corridor in Swaziland is peri-urban land and an estimated 80% of this land is Swazi Nation land administered under the traditional "khonta" system. Whereas most people seek to acquire land from here because it is cheaper and not governed by formal planning controls, they also want to access the social facilities provided by the municipalities. Confusion, conflicts, contests and contradictions occur due to blurred roles and functions of the administrative, legislative and policy planning arrangements. This article explores the case of Manzini City by situating it in the context of cities in the development world. It looks at the planning challenges that are raised by the traditional khonta system and policy changes for the management of peri-urban areas. The thrust of argument in this paper is that an integrated development approach is crucial for harmonising the traditional-modern contrasts and contradictions in the urban management of the PUI of Swaziland. This argument is intended to speak to the experience of cities in the developing world and it suggests some approaches of dealing with these problems by deriving from the experience of "new regionalism" in the United States and in South Africa.