The de facto rules -: The growth and change of an informal settlement in Durban, South Africa

Until the late 1980s, Besters Camp, in Durban, South Africa grew outside the control of the state and its law. This continued until the introduction of the settlement's first development interventions in the early 1990s. Then statutory frameworks directly influenced the infernal make-up of the settlement. By the late 1990s, the settlement had come full circle and had become integrated into the political and legal fabric of Durban. However, its informal infernal fabric remains largely unchanged. Such layers of formality and informality require that development planners in informal settlements should understand the de jure and the de facto 'rules of the game' if they are effectively to integrate the needs of settlement residents into development processes.