GRT-INSPIRED was the first urban node in the SAPRIN team. SAPRIN’s focus is on long-term surveillance using high quality longitudinal data to better understand health outcomes for the poor, as well as demographic change and migratory patterns and their impact; we have expanded this to cover key aspects of urbanisation, economic development and other areas of interest in this key space in South Africa.
The 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation called for inter- and transdisciplinary research, and GRT-INSPIRED has a team health expert, WASH (water and sanitation health) experts, and we locate them next to urbanists, economists, environmental scientists and others. As the White Paper noted, this kind of cross-fertilisation leads to better insights for all. For example, we will use the granular data generated by the HDSS to analyse class stratification (‘the poor’ are not an undifferentiated mass), income differentials, service and grant access, and other issues, for their impacts on health outcomes. Our goal is to provide the richest possible set of outputs from this intervention. We are guided in this approach by key policy documents which point to multidisciplinary.
The approach of GRT-INSPIRED in covering multiple urban forms responds to the South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap (DST, 2016:35), which notes that South Africa faces “several challenges, including high levels of inequality … an unemployment rate of 25% … a poverty headcount ratio of 57% as well as colliding epidemics of HIV/TB and non-communicable diseases”. Sadly, the figures have worsened. But the point stands: trying to single out a single issue from the ‘colliding’ challenges that are concentrated in Gauteng, may miss a more complex picture. Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa, covering just 1.46% of the land mass, but with the largest population share (26%), and generating 34% of national GDP. The poverty headcount ratio is lower (at 42%) than nationally (56%), for example; but the province has 1,9 million people living with HIV, second only to KwaZulu-Natal, and includes Johannesburg, the most unequal city on the planet. As Statistics South Africa noted a few of years ago, Gauteng’s economy is roughly the size of Morocco’s national economy and is the 7th largest in Africa (http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12056) – but this is far from equally shared.
Undergirding inequality in Gauteng is apartheid spatial engineering, which has proved remarkably enduring, and which has hardcreted inequality into the physical landscape and the built environment. In short, apartheid meant that black, coloured and Indian townships were built far from ‘white’ suburbs and separated by physical barriers both constructed (such as highways) or mine dumps or industrial belts, and natural barriers such as rivers. Townships were built to embody the ‘apart-ness’ of the ideology and were also deliberately under-resourced and under-serviced since they were ostensibly urban dormitories for temporary sojourners whose ‘real’ homes were in rural areas or Bantustans.
As more and more people have moved into post-apartheid Gauteng, so they have had to use informality as a means of at least settling here – hence the vast site and service areas in the south such as Orange Farm – and to move closer to city centres with work opportunities and services, via the infiltration of garages, gardens and green spaces to use as residential spaces. If we look at Melusi, one of our sites, we see the health and risk indicators for such communities, with HIV test requests at 13,2%, 3% with TB, 13% of children under 5 years of age not immunised, 6% with chronic conditions – and this from the 1906 households that had been registered and assessed before GRT-INSPIRED began. While there is a great deal of research occurring in Gauteng, none of it is generating longitudinal population data, allowing on-going assessment of government interventions on the people living in the province; nor is there work operating at the scale and depth that GRT-INSPIRED can, because most use cross-sectional survey snapshots, while we dig deep into the spaces located in the node.
GRT-INSPIRED will never be representative of Gauteng and does not make any such claims. We do not operate in suburbia – or any space beyond the three sites. But by developing a highly detailed understanding of every individual and household living in each site (as well as tracking their movements if they leave), GRT-INSPIRED will provide the most granular and accurate dataset for the province, with explanatory variables covering a wide range of issues, and located in sites that have a wide range of urban forms. By deploying multidisciplinary teams to analyse the data, GRT-INSPIRED should be a useful tool for policymakers, academics, journalists, philanthropists and many others, as they seek a detailed understanding of the social processes occurring in the province.