West Coast
Ann Eveleth looks at plans to make economic well-being more than a brief tourist boom
Most Septembers a sea of wild flowers drowns the rugged protrusions of the Cedarberg mountains that separate the quaint mission villages of Wupperthal from the Atlantic seaboard. In that lucky month, the narrow roads lead bands of tourists into this remote region.
The tourist money sparks a welcome, if brief, economic boom for the string of tiny Western Cape towns. Wupperthal’s Lekkerbekkie restaurant fills up, and the string of cottage industries that form the mainstay of this Moravian mission station’s economy attract visitors.
Piet Gertze, manager of the local Velskoen handmade shoe factory, explains the difference these visitors make: “We usually sell about 10 pairs of shoes a day. But from August we get big orders because of the flower season. People come for the flowers and see the shoes, and now we are working very hard.”
But the boom only lasts a month or two. And some years, when the rain misses its crucial pre-blossom beat, the flower-gazers don’t come.
Local industries employ only a handful of the 2 300 residents of Wupperthal and its 10 far-flung satellite villages. The rest eke out a living from subsistence farming, and feed their children with the milk of a small herd of communal goats.
Four out of five of the primary schools kept alive until recently by the church face closure now that they depend on state finance. Attempts to build a second crche have failed because most locals can’t afford to make even a small monetary contribution.
“We’re crying out for development. All our educated people have to go to Cape Town and other areas to make a living,” says Reverend William Valentyn, the local pastor and chair of the local council.
The close-knit community – mainly descendants of freed slaves who found refuge in the mission – is banking on the West Coast Investment Initiative to bring development to their remote corner of the world. It is one of eight spatial development initiatives (SDIs) that together form the bedrock of the government’s trade development plan.
An organic rooibos tea project, started in March this year, forms the centre of Wupperthal’s aspirations.
“Although rooibos tea was first exposed to Europe via the Moravian church, the trade with Germany later prompted other farmers in Clanwilliam [about 40km north-west of Wupperthal] to grow it.
“The Rooibos Marketing Board then set quotas which limited Wupperthal’s production. But the best rooibos grows wild on the mountains here,” says Ferdinand Engel, a local man who grew up in the nearby Elim mission station. He has joined forces with the Western Cape’s trade and investment promotion agency, Wesgro, in a bid to remind the world that Wupperthal is the real “world rooibos capital”.
“We started a community-owned company in March to produce organic rooibos and we sold 20 tons – our entire crop. Unfortunately, we had to settle for R5 a kilo because the price went down. But other companies are sitting with 100 tons they can’t sell because the European markets want organic rooibos.” Engel expects production to double during December’s harvest.
Wupperthal’s 110 new rooibos entrepreneurs – processors, harvesters and cultivators – have big plans for their venture. A new tea court, built with a R300 000 Reconstruction and Development Programme grant, allows the tea to be sifted, crushed and dried on the premises.
“Now we are negotiating with the British government’s division for international development for funds for a feasibility study on processing, sterilising and packaging rooibos. We are looking for joint-venture partners to build our own packaging plant,” says Engel.
Wupperthal’s rooibos project is one of 120 West Coast Investment Initiative investment opportunities identified by Wesgro and the Department of Trade and Industry.
Project manager Laurine Platzky says its primary objectives include promoting exports to increase foreign exchange earnings; the creation of sustainable jobs and entrepreneurs; better use of existing resources and infrastructure; and increasing black empowerment and small-, medium- and micro-enterprise ownership.
The proposed projects are tipped to generate nearly R20-billion in investment and to create 20 000 new jobs. They target tourism, fishing, mariculture, agriculture and agri- processing, and infrastructure.
The big-money projects centre on minerals and industry. Iscor’s controversial R6,8-billion Saldanha steel mill is the focal point of the West Coast Investment Initiative.
Providing 600 new jobs and already processing 1,2-million tons of hot- rolled steel coil a year, Saldanha is expected to attract a string of downstream industries to the 1 350ha industrial development zone.
The R850-million Duferco steel- processing plant under construction down the road is a 50/50 joint venture between the Industrial Development Corporation and Swiss-based steel traders Duferco.
The company will process about 50% of Saldhana’s steel output when it opens for business early next year, adding about 35% to the value of Saldanha’s steel and creating a further 190 permanent local jobs.
Like Wupperthal’s tea, Duferco’s steel is solely for export. The company will use Portnet’s R300-million Saldanha Port project, in keeping with the SDI vision.
But is that where the economic trickle ends? “We are looking for further investments in South Africa, but we have no policy on ploughing profits back into the country,” says Hennie Botes, Duferco project director.
Platzky says the SDIs hope to generate enough economic spin-offs from downstream industries, employment and tax revenue to offset the ebb and flow of foreign investor capital.
An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report on export processing zones released this week points out that many zone-operating countries have anticipated similar long-term spin-offs, but few have managed to develop a wide range of domestic export industries on the basis of zone investment.
“If export processing zones are to realise the full knock-on economic effects desired by the host countries, greater linkages with the domestic economies need to be forged,” the ILO report says.