It's to be expected that cities such as Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town w ould top the lists of places with the best quality of life in SA.
But a new study unveiled at Oxford University in the UK last week has thrown up a set of surprising results, where places such as Pretoria, Soweto, Pietermaritzburg and Port Elizabeth also make the grade.
Researchers Stephanié Roussouw and Wim Naudé have produced the first survey that measures the quality of life of South Africans by using three different indices. Naudé says they took the view that income is only one aspect of the quality of life because "it is a broader concept", and income is most often only "an instrumental goal and not an ultimate goal of development".
WHAT IT MEANS
 Worst geographical quality of life found in Johannesburg
Natural beauty a big compensatory factor
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"The ultimate goals are things like health, long life and education," says Naudé, a South African, who is a professor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research in Finland.
One of the more striking findings is that the geographical and environmental quality of life in SA is better in nonurban areas, where per capita incomes tend to be lower and fewer South Africans are living. So areas such Calvinia and Gordonia are on the top 10 list as places with the best environment and climate to live in. The survey uses SA's 354 magisterial districts as a basis.
The study concludes that natural beauty and an undegraded natural environment are not priorities in most of the densely populated areas in SA, and that improvements in people's quality of life may be achieved by upgrading the natural environment.
In fact, most of the top 10 magisterial districts are in the Cape, which, as the study points out, has the second-highest area of forest and water bodies in SA.
This, according to Naudé, is the clearest indication in the study that the province's natural beauty enhances and contributes positively to quality of life.
But if you use the population index as a measure, the results are radically different. While it was expected that the five metropolitan municipalities (Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban) would make the top 10 list of the population index ranking, the fact that Soweto, Inanda and Randburg are also in this group is a surprise.
And in a third finding, where the human development index (HDI) is used, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg are joined on the HDI list by places such as Roodepoort, Bellville, Somerset West and Simonstown.
"When we started out, we expected to see a close link between income and nonincome areas of quality of life," says Naudé. "The fact that we found it was not so close is a positive development, because it means that income is not the only determinant of quality of life."
Naudé says this stark variance in the three indices suggests that cities such as Pretoria and Johannesburg are not as efficient as other places at translating income gains into noneconomic gains.
The relatively high rankings of places such as Soweto and Mitchell' s Plain in the HDI ranking shows that these places were relatively successful in doing this. It also shows that the most populous places in SA are not the places where the geographical or environmental quality of life is the best.
The worst - in terms of geographical quality of life among the largest urban areas - is Johannesburg, which is ranked 340th. Pretoria is ranked 163rd, Soweto 328th and Port Elizabeth 56th.
Yet all of these districts rank in the top 10 of the other indices. Among the large metros, Port Elizabeth has the best environmental rating. "Of the big cities, PE confirms that coastal cities are among the fastest-growing in SA," says Naudé.
Of the eight places considered, the poorest of the poor in SA - Nkandla, Hlabisa, Polela, Flagstaff, Elliotdale, Bergville, Babanango and Ngotse - five are in the Eastern Cape and the rest in KwaZulu Natal.
Naudé believes the research findings can be used as a tool in the fight against poverty, particularly as government has placed increasing responsibility on local authorities to drive its economic development programme. "If you consider that 80% of SA's GDP is produced in just 20% of the country, you can see why government will want to be more focused on how it deals with inequalities," says Naudé.
