South Africa has defined any settlement managed by a local authority as an ‘urban
area’, which resulted in a separation of rural areas from towns and cities and deepening
inequality for rural residents. This definition fell away following the promulgation of the
Municipal Structures Act 17 of 1998, which initiated a process of re-demarcation of
municipalities (Box 9.1). The Municipal Demarcation Board significantly improved human
settlement management by placing all rural and urban land in the country under the jurisdiction
of local government7. Coupled to this, Statistics South Africa in the 2001 Census categorized
census enumeration areas involving a mix of criteria (e.g. structure of the built environment,
land use and political institutions present). This resulted in a broadening of settlement types to
incorporate more strongly informal and semi-urban aspects in urban classification from 1996
and 2001 Census.