Abstract
Apartheid's political economy, grounded in racial and class-based segregation, profoundly shaped South Africa's urban and industrial geography. Through intertwined political, economic, and spatial strategies, the apartheid regime produced a highly uneven landscape of development. This paper adopts a Geographical Political Economy (GPE) framework to examine how state policies and institutional arrangements structured urban-industrial space, with a focus on the Bophuthatswana Bantustan within the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) industrial complex. The GPE approach foregrounds the role of historical processes, power relations, and geographic context in shaping economic outcomes and spatial configurations. Drawing on archival sources, policy documents, and secondary literature, the paper analyses the mechanisms through which apartheid's decentralization and industrialization policies entrenched uneven development. It demonstrates how state planning and territorial governance strategies reinforced racialized labor markets and fragmented spatial economies.The paper contributes to debates on the historical-geographical production of inequality in southern Africa by linking institutional legacies to contemporary urban-industrial policy challenges. It argues that post-apartheid development remains constrained by inherited spatial and institutional structures, particularly in Gauteng. The study underscores the value of historically informed spatial analysis in addressing persistent inequality and re-imagining more inclusive pathways for industrial and urban development.