The Lingering Environmental Impact of Repressive Governance: The Environmental Legacy of the Apartheid Era for the New South Africa

Citation

Steyn P (2005) The Lingering Environmental Impact of Repressive Governance: The Environmental Legacy of the Apartheid Era for the New South Africa. Globalizations, 2 (3), pp. 391-402. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747730500367983

Abstract
This article aims to explore the historical link between contemporary environmental problems and the environmental, economic and political policies of the apartheid government. The analysis draws on an examination of the detrimental environmental impacts of the apartheid era and how international isolation impacted on governmental environmental management in the country, before turning attention to the way in which the ANC government has managed the South African natural and human environments in the period after 1994. The article shows that despite many important new developments since 1994, that there are high levels of continuity between the environmental management practices of the old and the new regimes. This state of affairs negatively impacts on the ability of the ANC government to provide every South African citizen with the clean and safe environment guaranteed to all within the 1996 Bill of Rights.

Keywords
South African history; Apartheid; South African History; Apartheid South Africa

Notes
This article also appeared unchanged as a chapter in the following edited collection: Jan Oosthoek and Barry K. Gills (eds), _The Globalization of Environmental Crisis_ (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 109-120.

Journal
Globalizations: Volume 2, Issue 3

People

Dr Phia Steyn

Lecturer, History