Governance in South African Secondary Cities

South Africa has a well-defined set of secondary cities and a local planning regime that provides a governance framework. Its secondary cities have two main characteristics with implications for governance: they lack economic diversity, and they have large rural hinterlands. This chapter uses concepts from evolutionary governance theory to discuss six main governance challenges in these cities: strategic and economic planning, the diverse set of role players, the rural hinterland and the regional services function, mining booms and busts, spatial governance, and the pressure to become metropolitan areas. We conclude that path dependencies, goal dependencies, and interdependencies, compounded by a planning system that emphasises plan making rather than implementation, hamper governance in these cities.