ANC wants to build new smart city on the east coast
The ANC has been working quietly on plans to build a new city on the coast between Port St Johns and Margate.
The closely guarded plans were presented at the party’s last national executive committee lekgotla. They were presented by the minister of co-operative governance & traditional affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
Described as a new city that is “coastal, smart, vibrant, integrated, prosperous, sustainable and resilient”, the ANC believes the development will help reduce unemployment, promote tourism and reverse migration and apartheid spatial planning.
Referred to as the “eastern seaboard development”, it is hoped the project will make a dent in poverty by correcting the legacy of apartheid spatial planning, promote new black industrialists and have an integrated city while capturing the imagination of the people in asserting the ANC as leader of society, according to Dlamini-Zuma’s document.
It says the development could be an integral part of the expected coastal belt plan that will link Alexander Bay, on the Namibian border, with Kosi Bay near the border with Mozambique, and be complemented by inland and other hub developments.
The area is said to be the third-largest coastline in Africa at 3,600km, and a meeting point of “two great oceanic systems”.
Dlamini-Zuma punts it as a potential tourism destination, and speaks of coral reefs that are a “flamboyant ecological signature” of the Agulhas coast.
With about 20 surgeon-fish species, dolphins and sardine shoals, moray eel types, anemones and shrimps it is also home to the Mozambique tilapia fish. The ecotourism potential and diverse marine biology of the area are said to be among the competitive advantages of the area.
Dlamini-Zuma highlighted the fertile and unused land that she said had a huge potential for hemp. She said the people there were unprepared in this regard.
The development would also address and reverse apartheid migration patterns and spatial planning, where in the main people went to Johannesburg, eThekwini, Cape
Town and to mines in North West and Limpopo to find employment.
The document identifies the area as having a high rate of youth unemployment. It says most households there are headed by women who are unemployed and are vulnerable to climate change.
“This will require the reversal of the low skills base, which has 11.6% of the country’s population with no matric,” it reads.
Dlamini-Zuma told the lekgotla there was broad political and traditional leadership buy-in for the project.
The document reveals that the ANC, at its lekgotla in January, endorsed the new city and that in his state of the nation address President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed the government’s commitment when he said “new post-apartheid cities are being conceptualised in a number of places”.
The Eastern Cape premier and relevant MECs had been briefed and had expressed commitment to the undertaking.
The KwaZulu-Natal state of the province referred to new smart cities and that the province supported development.
While the ANC document has no timeline or budget, public works & infrastructure minister Patricia de Lille told the National Council of Provinces earlier this month that a complete strategy was likely to be presented to the cabinet by April.
De Lille told MPs that the initiative of a new city presented a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform and improve the quality of life for urban people in the future.
She said a framework was being developed through a study, an intensive research and consultative process that would culminate in a strategic action plan for the development. So far a core project team and a reference group have been set up and the terms of reference for the reference group and the project team have been developed.
“We will further set up a stakeholder and communication plan and research unit that will look at international best practice on the build of new cities, of new towns,” De Lille said.
The London School of Economics and local universities were on board in this regard and formed part of the reference group.
De Lille said they wanted to complete all the evaluation framework and confirm all the land ownership early next year.
In her response to the National Council of Provinces on September 7, a day after the ANC lekgotla, De Lille said the government had not decided on where the city would be built, but once a complete strategy had been developed, and there was a brief and a specification of what kind of a new city it wanted, this would be presented to an inter-ministerial committee and the cabinet.
Only after that would a proposal go out to build this new city through a competitive and open process, she said.
De Lille said the new city was not the same as the smart city that was being built close to the Lanseria airport in Gauteng.