Facing up to challenges

ALL citizens should be treated equally. There should be a balance between rural and urban communities, a choice whether to live in urban or rural Eastern Cape and basic services should be available to all our citizens. Unfortunately, there has been many common challenges facing rural areas. For many years there has been inadequate support and a prolonged pattern of declining town centres and increasing regional gaps in quality of life. Looking after the economic health of our rural areas is critical.

Rapid urbanisation due to lack of opportunity in these areas has its own set of negative socioeconomic issues such as unemployment, poverty and housing shortages. The challenges facing our rural small towns include:

Overloaded old and collapsing infrastructure;

Lack of capacity in infrastructure development and maintenance;

Small towns do not attract new private investment;

New private investment is constrained by lack of public land transfer and tenure issues;

There are typically poor relationships between municipalities and business and ratepayers; and

Provincial government support has been fragmented.

Indeed, authorities in many rural areas struggle to retain people in places where they were born and grew up. Younger people leave the villages and small towns to pursue careers in capital cities. Rural migration to the urban areas is on the rise for income opportunities and better living conditions. The result is a spiral of decline in services and infrastructure which in turn exacerbates the problem of supporting an ageing population.

In the small and rural towns, income generating opportunities are few, poverty is pervasive, agriculture has turned expensive and poor social status pulls people back from getting their children educated to aspire for a better life. Indeed, unemployment in rural towns and villages remains disproportionately high. The result has been that mega-cities thrive at the expense of rural communities; an option that few provincial governments find politically acceptable. Rapid urbanisation is creating disorder in city life. City authorities are finding it difficult to ensure utility services like water supply, sanitation and hygienic housing, forcing people to make their own means and live in rented slums. I believe that local communities must be actively mobilised and intimately involved in developing a blueprint for revitalising their towns and villages. As a nation we need a good balance between our urban and rural populations and to maintain the rich diversity of our provinces. Here in the Eastern Cape, we have come to terms with the fact that a successful entrepreneurial community cannot be built overnight and there must be a long view and commitment to enabling this to happen over a period of at least 23 years embracing, over time, both success and failure. That is why we have adopted the implementation of an Integrated Small Towns Revitalisation Strategy which is supported with a budget of R552-million. The overall goal is to reverse the socioeconomic decline of small towns by supporting municipalities in improving basic services provision. This is being underpinned by local economic development, youth empowerment and development.

The prioritised towns include Ntabankulu, Mt Ayliff, Bizana in the Alfred Nzo District, Alice in the Amathole district, Mount Fletcher in the Joe Gqabi district, Libode, Nqgeleni and Port St Johns in the O R Tambo district and Kirkwood in the Sarah Baartman district.

Criteria for the selection of towns for the programme are: Recognition of previous and current efforts, economic development potential and future impact, land availability and superfluous state buildings, tourism potential, transportation linkages, knowledge economy potential and geographic spread.

The main pillars of this strategy are, infrastructure development, beautification and environmental management, local economic development, tourism, heritage and marketing. We hope this strategy will result in improved urban planning and public infrastructure, improving local economic benefits, youth empowerment and skills development and enhancing deeper knowledge base on the design and delivery of effective small town development programmes. We want more people to appreciate the hidden potential of their towns and villages.

In the end, economic sustainability is about building linkages, keeping the money local and revitalising the economy.

Phumulo Masualle is premier of the Eastern Cape Province. Follow him on @EC_ Premier and on Facebook at Masincokole