Eastern Cape rolls up its sleeves to reverse legacy of apartheid
• A large variety of provincial initiatives are in place to tackle underdevelopment and poverty
It “is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change”, said Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, geologist and biologist best known for his contributions to the science of evolution to explain change.
As we entrench democratic values and make changes to tackle SA’s triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment, we will always have to get past the charlatans and the naysayers, analysts and political scientists who are reluctant to recognise initiatives that are slowly improving people’s lives.
We are not opposed to criticism. We welcome views such as the one expressed by academic and former public servant Gusha Xolani Ngantweni (Eastern Cape needs urgent help, March 24), who concludes that the province has failed.
Undoing the past to defeat poverty, inequality and unemployment is not easy.
Of all apartheid’s legacies, the network of so-called independent homelands inside SA’s borders has proved one of the most difficult to erase.
The Eastern Cape province is an amalgamation of the former Transkei, the former Ciskei and the eastern portion of the former Cape Province. This amalgamation initiated an administrative process tantamount to merging three different states into one, a process that has not yet been fully normalised into the government system.
Integrating underdeveloped economies into a single province has accentuated the inequalities and put strain on limited resources. This is one of the reasons the poverty head count has remained stubbornly at 12.7% — the highest of all of SA’s provinces.
Such vestiges of apartheid spatial planning remain a stark reality in the human settlement patterns. About 65% (1.2-million) of the province’s citizens live in informal settlements and another 1.5-million migrate to other provinces, particularly Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, to be closer to work opportunities and other services. The migration is retarding economic growth and development in the Eastern Cape and has suppressed infrastructure investment in the region, specifically in the former homeland areas.
Enough with the past. What are we doing to balance focus with opportunity, to arrest the province’s triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment? As the provincial government, our job is to turn an impoverished and underdeveloped Eastern Cape into a thriving province.
One may ask: are we succeeding? The answer is yes. The Eastern Cape of today is not the same as the Eastern Cape of before 1994.
Travelling around the province, here is what every traveller will observe:
Through targeted investment, the Eastern Cape government has turned Port Elizabeth into a stable industrial hub that compares well with the former “Vaal Triangle”, Vereeniging-Witwatersrand-Pretoria;
Port Elizabeth, in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, is an industrial and a car manufacturing hub with the lowest poverty head count in the province of just 3%;
Priority is given to early childhood development, management and governance at schools, teacher-development, 100% delivery of learning and teaching support material, improving matric results, ensuring inclusive education for persons living with disabilities, increasing the number of and access to no-fee schools to more than 90% and improving the governance of transport for pupils;
Procurement reforms have been initiated to benefit local suppliers and service providers, specifically small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) and co-operatives;
Financial and nonfinancial support to 629 SMMEs and 453 co-operatives. Businesses that belong to young people and to women received increased support in line with our small business development policy statement;
The economic opportunities and benefits derived from converting the province’s industrial development zones to special economic zones are being strengthened;
Identified sectors, such as aquaculture and the ocean economy, are being expanded by optimising our comparative advantage of having the country’s longest stretch of coastline;
Support is being provided to small-scale and smallholder farmers, especially with regard to agricultural infrastructure;
New milling hubs are being established and priority given to the stimulation of rural development, land reform and food security to uplift marginalised households from poverty through agriculture;
The building of abattoirs, dairy infrastructure and aquaculture incubation schemes, as well as agri-parks, co-operatives and clusters in the poorest districts;
The stabilising of all struggling municipalities and strengthening of all municipalities;
The placement of unemployed youth, training youth artisans and employing 2% of persons with disabilities, as well as achieving leadership and development of women in leadership;
Leveraging of information and communication technology to enable delivery and access to services in the province;
The improvement of road networks, with special attention to rural access roads through maintenance and resurfacing to achieve integrated sustainable human settlements and improve human settlement patterns;
The adoption of an integrated service delivery model known as Operation Masiphathisane to connect communities directly with the relevant departmental officials and service providers to ensure the provision of services in a sustainable manner;
The leveraging of 800km of pristine coastline through maritime schools and maritime training centres at all three ports and aquaculture pilot projects in Hamburg, Qholora, Mthatha Dam, Haga Haga, Grahamstown and Graaff-Reinet;
Growing tourism through road infrastructure on the Wild Coast Meander to improve our ranking as a tourist attraction in SA’s missions and tourism offices abroad; and
The Eastern Cape is home to eight manufacturers in the renewable energy sector, with a combined investment value of more than R1bn.
Despite enormous challenges and constraints, we are working hard to tackle poverty, inequality and unemployment. All of us must embrace the principle of inclusive growth and bring more people into the circle of opportunity that growth and development provide to help our province deliver the benefits of democracy.
INTEGRATING UNDERDEVELOPED ECONOMIES INTO A SINGLE PROVINCE HAS PUT STRAIN ON LIMITED RESOURCES