The authors analysed the current situation and considered future scenarios. Achieving a just transition will be difficult. Several reasons contribute to this. First, neoliberalism is a specific phase of economic development and is socially embedded in society (see Chapter 1). Policymakers need to take both these arguments into account to counter these embedded realities. Second, an approach towards a just transition requires mining companies to understand that investment is required at the back end of the mine life-cycle. Mining companies have a responsibility to assist with the transition. Thirdly, a just transition also requires local governance, accountability and finance. Fourthly, an active approach to dealing with the consequences of the decline. At the bottom of all, this approach acknowledges the negative side of mine closure.

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Historically, mining companies worldwide provided housing and developed towns to accommodate their employees. At the end of the 1980s this approach became less prevalent and attempts were made to mitigate the effects of mine development and mine closure on communities living near the mines. Permanent settlement in mining towns urgently needed to be minimized. Since the advent of democracy, South African policy has moved in the opposite direction, shifting the emphasis to creating integrated communities and encouraging home ownership. Despite this policy shift, however, mines continue to influence local housing conditions. One direct outcome has been the development of informal settlements. We surveyed 260 informal settlement households in Postmasburg, a small and remotely located town in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. We found that because they employ contract workers and thus arouse expectations of employment, the mines here contribute extensively to the development of informal settlements. But local factors also contribute, and the functional role of informal settlements as a form of housing that supports mobility should not be underestimated. We also found that both municipal and mining company policies for informal settlements were inadequate. Finally, we found that low-income informal settlers not associated with mine employment suffered the highest levels of social disruption. mining, mining towns, informal settlements, housing policy.

The Practice of Everyday Life (de Certeau M (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) has become a canonical text in urban studies, with de Certeau’s idea of tactics having been widely deployed to understand and theorise the everyday. Tactics of resistance were contrasted with the strategies of the powerful, but the ways in which these strategies are operationalised were left ambiguous by de Certeau and have remained undertheorised since. We address this lacuna through an examination of the planning profession in South Africa as a lieu propre– a strategic territory with considerable power to shape urban environments. Based on a large interview data set examining practitioner attitudes toward the state of the profession in South Africa, this paper argues that the strategies of the powerful are themselves subject to negotiation. We trace connections with de Certeau’s earlier work to critique the idea that strategies are univocal. We do this by examining how the interests of different powerful actors can come into conflict, using the planning profession as an exemplar of how opposing strategies must be mediated in order to secure changes in society.

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