Good memory: Benjamin Mphalele
Benjamin Mphahlele remembers a time when travelling on the R37 road that cuts through the Tubatse region of Limpopo was as easy as driving on a highway with no traffic. The area was plagued by grinding poverty brought about by the combination of a dormant economy and years of neglect by the apartheid regime.
“But you go to Tubatse today,” enthuses Mphahlele, managing director of the Limpopo Economic Development Agency (Leda), whose role is to implement the province’s economic strategy. “The types of houses you see, the cars being driven, the traffic … it reflects improved economic activity and living conditions.”
Indeed, the winds of change have reached this once predominantly rural backwater, thanks to aggressive economic revitalisation programmes. Shopping malls have sprung up, the R37 roars daily with heavy traffic and areas where there was once nothing but dense bush for communal grazing are now filled with thousands of stylish Tuscan houses.
Tubatse forms part of the Greater Sekhukhune district of Limpopo, which is right in the middle of the mineral-rich bushveld mining complex. Although it is the smallest in the province, making up just 11% of Limpopo’s geographical area, Sekhukhune is arguably the busiest and fastest growing economic hub. Back at the turn of the millennium it was home to only a few chrome and platinum mines. Many of its more than one million people were unemployed and relied on remittances from relatives working in Gauteng and government grants.
But, said Mphahlele, between 2001 and the present 17 new mining operations were established in the region, which has led to an unprecedented economic and population boom. The area which incorporates the towns of Burgersfort, Steelpoort and more than 116 rural villages and settlements is set for further economic growth with a proposed 22 new mining ventures set to begin operations in the near future and the proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ) that will grow the manufacturing sector.
Leda has applied to the national government through the department of trade and industry to grant the Tubatse region SEZ status, to expand the strategic and competitive industries that will attract more and more investments in the area.
The provincial government hopes the SEZ will help increase exports of value added manufactured goods, and foreign and domestic investment. The Greater Tubatse Municipality, which is in the heart of the proposed SEZ, is hoping that retail and service businesses will respond to the opening of mines and the development of housing by also locating close to these areas. In time, this may eventually alter the current fragmented spatial pattern by creating a few large urban settlements, if the expected scale of mining activities materialises.
It is also expected that the development will help Limpopo improve on the 147 000 jobs it created last year. According to Statistics South Africa’s Labour Force Survey the province created 59 000 jobs in the last quarter of 2015. Mphahlele believes that this will also go a long way towards eradicating the poverty that continues to gnaw at many of the area’s households.
Mphahlele said the poverty levels and underdevelopment encountered by the democratic government in the area in 1994 were horrifying. At the time, every R1 earned in employment was shared among 20 people in the district. He said the goal is to eventually reduce this to three people for every R1 earned. The rate currently stands at eight people for every R1 earned.
“That’s serious progress. You can see that is fast growth by any other deinition. [But] because the level and depth of poverty has been so deep, it would appear [on the surface] that there hasn’t been anything that changed,” said Mphahlele.
The province’s economy grew from second smallest — just above Northern Cape — at an annual R31-billion in 1995 to R231-billion in 2014. This was achieved mainly through the opening up of the bushveld mining complex. Mining contributes 27% to Limpopo’s provincial GDP and the province has 41% of the country’s platinum group metals, mostly in Tubatse. The province also accounts for 50% of the country’s coal reserves, mainly in the Waterberg region.
Mphahlele said it took lots of research and consultation with investors to lure them to the bushveld mining complex. One of Leda’s functions is to ensure that key stakeholders share a common vision and pull in the same direction. “We had to negotiate nose-to-nose with mining companies to say to them, come and mine,” said Mphahlele.
A provincial mining roundtable, which sits every two years, was established to enable all stakeholders to iron out obstacles. He said they had to first understand the investors’ needs and also lay down the groundwork for mutually beneficial co-operation. Government worked on ensuring that mining houses have access to water resources, which are key to their operations. This included structural changes to the Flag Boshielo Dam to release 16 cubic million metres of water for mining operations.
But now, with almost two-dozen new mines set to start operations in the area, the need to upgrade the road infrastructure has been identified.
According to Mphahlele, when the mines eventually begin operating at optimum level, it will translate into a heavy-duty truck taking to the already congested road every five minutes to transport mineral ore to the smelter near Polokwane, in the northwest of the area. “We need to improve the road infrastructure. The R37 is under pressure.”
To this end, said Mphahlele, they are now looking into a long-term solution: creating a rail link to ease the pressure on the road, which is the main artery that connects the Tubatse region to the northern and western parts of the province.