Abstract
The establishment of municipalities in South Africa has been a long and difficult process, 25 years later it still appears to be evolving. In 1994, the new democratic government undertook to restructure the country’s racially segregated administrative structure by integrating areas to form cohesive municipal entities which would allow for the more efficient management of the municipal areas. However, the demarcation approach was easier to pen on paper than to implement in practice. This paper explored the South African spatial reform process from 1993 to 2020, by analyzing literature and legislative frameworks, in order to determine how municipalities were demarcated and the challenges they experienced. The study found that the spatial restructuring process was particularly complex since there was limited knowledge of the spatial landscape and there where many unresolved spatial administrative issues. The study calls for further research to support the formation of more efficient municipal areas which are more aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
