Abstract
This article has focused on the challenges of creating inclusionary or integrated human settlements in post-apartheid South Africa by analyzing the views of the senior public servants who have played significant roles in policy implementation in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council between 1994 and 2018. It unravels the intricacies of the strategies pursued by the policy makers in their attempts to re-engineer the greater metropolitan city to accommodate the strategy of creating racially and class integrated neighborhoods in the attempt to mitigate the historical inequalities emanating from the apartheid era. However, the failure of these efforts to meet the intended objectives has been found to derive from the inability of the state to address the urban land question, the racially based inherited wealth, and failure of the economy to create jobs. The growth of the economy without creating jobs and the inability of the state to intervene on the land prices on behalf of the poor has not only exacerbated the reproduction of the apartheid urban sprawl in Johannesburg it has also sustained the inequality gap. The strategy of pursuing catalytic projects with the hope of encouraging cross-subsidization between the rich classes and the poor has failed to mitigate the inequality gap instead, it has widened the gap within the Black racial group. Inclusionary human settlements policies have so far failed to produce the state intended policy objectives and the economy has failed to create jobs closer to where people live to reduce the travel costs. Thus, the state housing subsidy policy and the funding of the private sector bulk infrastructure development as an attempt to seduce the rich to cross-subsidize the poor have all failed.