Although Gauteng’s economic growth plan has been well received, the IFP believes the premier could be more candid about the province’s “achievements”
Bongani Majola
Continuing high crime levels and a tendency to overestimate what is attainable through the private sector are seen as potential flaws in Gauteng’s “Blue IQ”, the first comprehensive economic growth plan to emerge from any province.
But the plan, reinforced this week by Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa at the opening of the legislature, has been generally well-received.
The initiative, which will cost R500-million over three years, aims to stimulate business activity in South Africa’s economic hub through government investment in economic infrastructure in the areas of tourism, technology, transport and “high value-added manufacturing”. Gauteng accounts for more than 40% of South Africa’s GDP.
The plan encompasses 10 projects across the region, including the well-publicised Gautrain Rapid Rail Link, a rail-bound mass transit service in the Johannesburg-Pretoria corridor. The area between the two cities is experiencing the fastest rate of economic development in the region, according to the Gauteng government.
Less wellknown are moves to stimulate the growth of Gauteng’s automotive industry, which produces 50% of South Africa’s cars, and IT development.
In collaboration with the vehicle industry, the province has helped establish the Automotive Industry Development Centre in Pretoria, with the aim of promoting the growth, competitiveness and technical sophistication of the “automotive industry cluster” in Rosslyn and Waltloo.
One objective is to encourage the expansion of local component manufacturing to service motor assemblers like BMW, Nissan and Ford. The plan is to train young people from the surrounding townships and to tailor technikon courses to the companies’ needs.
IT development includes the establishment of an innovation centre in Pretoria, in a joint project with the CSIR and Pretoria University. The project team has approached major US systems companies, including Oracle, Cisco and Siemens, to set up shop there.
Most of the provincial investment will be in infrastructure. It will include an on- and off-ramp from the M2 to the City Deep container depot, to ease the supply problems of industry and roads, and other services for a planned industrial development zone at the Johannesburg airport.
On the tourism front, there are ambitious plans for the Sterkfontein/ Kromdraai world heritage site, including dual carriageway road access. Game is being located in a new game reserve in the north-east of the province, to be called Dinokeng (the place of rivers).
Spokesperson for the premier, Thabo Masebe, said the plan has successfully refocused growth planning away from Gauteng’s traditional industries, notably mining, to ways of expanding and sustaining alternative sectors.
Witwatersrand university professor of public management Alan Mabin said that “in view of the declining industries in the mining areas, the province’s economic plan looks progressively more practical now”.
However, the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Sibongile Nkomo believes Shilowa could have been more candid about the province’s “achievements”.
“We need to acknowledge, for example, that crime levels have consistently remained the single biggest stumbling block to investor confidence,” she said.
Masebe dismissed Democratic Alliance finance spokesperson Hermene Koortse’s suggestion that not all Blue IQ projects are on track and referred anybody with doubts to the premier’s refrain during his legislature address: Mintirho ya hina ya vulavula (Our work talks for itself).
Other provincial parties approached for comment were fully behind the strategy. The New National Party’s Johan Kilian said firm foundations have been laid for the province’s economic growth. “The only hindrance would be the capacity to deliver at the micro-management level of administration,” Kilian said.
Mabin said one likely challenge was the “need to integrate local metro plans with the larger provincial ambitions”. It is a challenge made real by Minister of Finance Trevor Manual’s announcement in the budget speech that the biggest budget increases in 2002/3 are bound for local governments.