The city has drafted the Mangaung Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) 2040 as an aspirational long-term development framework of the municipality.
The strategy will assist the city in frankly assessing itself and thus empower the city to see and envision its future clearly.
Mangaung GDS 2040 will be periodically amended to stay abreast of the nuances of change, transformation and development within the region, the province and at a national, continental and global level.
Going forward, Mangaung GDS 2040 will also be used to inform the subsequent five-year integrated development plans of the city.
There is an emerging consensus that cities are drivers of development and engines for economic development, and inevitably cities need to cultivate the ability to adapt and absorb changes within the regional, provincial, national and global contexts.
Cities are expected to respond appropriately to socioeconomic, environmental and governance matters inherent to city government.
Mangaung GDS 2040 presents a unique opportunity for the municipality to align its developmental agenda as articulated in its integrated development plan and embed these within the realm of the obtaining realities while building a solid foundation for the city.
The draft Mangaung GDS will enable the municipality, together with its stakeholders, to tease out creative and innovative ideas of transforming the city into a more responsive and inclusive place that is capable of rising to the challenge of dealing with many competing developmental needs.
The GDS is informed by the 12 outcomes adopted by government, the National Development Plan Vision 2030, the draft Provincial GDS Vision 2030 and political pronouncements made by council.
Critically, the elected leaders have mapped out a vision for a progressive municipality that is “globally safe and attractive to live, work and invest in”.
In line with the vision of the City, the municipality will strive to ensure that the following outcomes related to the vision are yieled:
• To be a democratic municipality, rooted in the Constitution, working with all sectors of society to improve the quality of life of the people of Mangaung;
• To be a municipality whose community is united in diversity, recognising our common interests and greater equality of women;
• To be a municipality that provides a high quality of services;
• To create an ideal environment for our people to work in and have access to jobs and ensure that workers’ rights are protected and the workforce is skilled;
• To build a municipality that ensures that businesses are afforded an environment to invest and profit in while promoting the common interests of the community, including decent work;
• To be an efficient municipality that protects its citizens, provides quality services and infrastructure as well as providing leadership for local development;
• To ensure that individuals and communities embrace mutual respect and human solidarity; and
• To be a municipality that works closely with other spheres of government, business and civil society to build a better metro, province and country.
These would be crystallised into the following overarching development outcomes to be achieved by 2040:
• A fully capable and seamless service delivery machinery
• A professionally managed institution and an employer of choice
• Economically astute and competitively attractive to investors
• An environmentally responsive metropolitan municipality driven by good.
The city is aware that the desired future is only possible if programmatic partnerships are forged with all stakeholders given the finite resources at the disposal of the state and the absolute necessity of yielding maximum impact through collaboration.
The executive mayor, Thabo Manyoni, has appointed 17 community champions who will be working with the city in the unfolding processes of facilitating community and stakeholders engagements, and providing inputs for the revision and finalisation of the Mangaung GDS.
The city has unfolded a comprehensive community and stakeholder outreach programme to engage robustly on where the Council, municipal administration and the community it serves intend to take the city.
We are facilitating a process of reimagining and dreaming about the city 27 years down the line.
Seven community consultation meetings on the draft GDS have been convened to afford an opportunity to communities to engage the municipality on the draft GDS and provide comments and inputs.
The thematic sectoral workshops have been convened and are organised around the following themes:
• Economic development;
• Capital infrastructure development plan and major infrastructure projects;
• Rural development;
• Environmental development; and
• Poverty alleviation.
City region and Smart City will assume a round-table discussion form. Provincial sector departments, the private sector and key stakeholders in communities are engaged in the mentioned thematic sectoral workshops wherein robust debates on these themes are facilitated and inputs provided will be used in finalising the Mangaung GDS and informing the corresponding implementation plan for the strategy.
Contents and photographs for this page were supplied and signed off by Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality