Mining transforms the once sleepy Tubatse
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.