Gauteng to accelerate its economy
MEC launches new plan to bolster growth We create jobs – trophy hunters
GAUTENG MEC for Economic Development Lebogang Maile will monitor the implementation of the recently unveiled Gauteng economic development plan on a weekly basis.
The Gauteng provincial government launched the plan at this week’s Gauteng Economic Indaba in Johannesburg.
The document has ranked key economic sectors depending on the pace at which they generate returns. Prioritised sectors are automotive and components, creative industries, tourism and hospitality and machinery and equipment.
The “low-hanging fruit” sectors would be developed earlier, according to the plan.
Maile said: “Our focus will be on the implementation of the plan. Our own performance will be based on the successful implementation of the plan. That includes the performance of senior management. Even our programme of action will reflect it,” said Maile.
Using feedback
He said the implementation of the plan would be informed by feedback from visits to various companies in the province.
“We will continue with the visits (to companies) because it is also important for us to understand their plans,” he said.
He was unfazed about concerns that red tape and bureaucracy could slow down the implementation of the plan.
“We are already dealing with red tape. Our service providers get paid in 14 days, instead of 30 days,” Maile said.
Gauteng Premier David Makhura last week said MEC for Human Settlements Paul Mashatile would lead a task team on ways to cut red tape.
Against the backdrop of a contracting economy, stubbornly high unemployment, looming government elections and the hawkish eye of the various rating agencies on South Africa, the country’s key government figures are increasingly vocal about the need to up the pace of the implementation of government plans such as the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the National Development Plan.
Speaking at the conference on Wednesday, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said the country should focus on implementing its various plans. Also speaking at the conference later on Wednesday, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said it was time for South Africa to take decisive action to stimulate economic growth and create jobs.
Some of the plan’s proposals include facilitating the participation of black-owned enterprises in the automotive and components sector. “As with all sectors, the focus on transfor- mation and the localisation of content is fast becoming a non-negotiable factor when conducting business in South Africa. The challenge with the sector however is the influence of the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on the inputs and execution of the vehicle to be produced, making localisation challenging to implement from the bottom up,” the document said.
It said the sector had high barriers to entry, which included the high costs required to set up manufacturing plants.
“The key to unlocking growth therefore lies in being innovative about how to localise participation in the value chain. Currently one of the approaches is to establish incubation centres that develop black-owned tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers for specific OEMs,” the plans said.
At the end of the five- to seven-year incubation period, the businesses could create market linkages with global OEMs, the plan said.
Transformation
“We are preoccupied with building a sustainable and inclusive economy… This is not a short-sighted plan. We are looking for transformative partnerships. We must ensure that we facilitate entrepreneurs’ access to markets and finance at the different levels of the value chain,” Maile said.
The document has highlighted lack of transformation in the automotive and components sector.
“Opportunity for transformation is positioned in the wholesale and retail phase of the industry value chain. This would require actual dealerships to be owned by black people. While these instances exist, they are not nearly as common as a diverse sector would require. OEMs may give considerations to using their influence to drive transformation within their value chains,” it said. HUNTERS who travel to Africa to shoot big game have been keeping a low profile in the aftermath of global outrage provoked by the killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe last year. Now they’re fighting back.
The conservation arm of Safari Club International (SCI), which suspended the membership of US dentist Walter Palmer for shooting Cecil, has published research that says trophy-hunting contributes $426 million (R6.4 billion) to eight sub-Saharan countries and employs 53 000 people.
United Airlines and Delta Air Lines banned transporting animal trophies and tighter hunting rules were introduced after Palmer shot the 13-yearold male lion, who was part of an Oxford University conservation project, after he wandered out of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park in July last year.
Such restrictions threaten a vital source of income for one of the world’s poorest regions, according to SCI, home to the world’s largest collection of hunting records.
“There are certainly some negative impacts that have been realised in the aftermath of that incident,” said Matthew Eckert, the director of conservation at the Safari Club Foundation, SCI’s conservation arm, which funded the report. “It’s drawing more attention from the public to one side of the perspective, that’s the animal activist, the animal rights movement. They’re being blinded and not seeing the importance of hunting to conservation and the people.”
Vital income
Each year between 2012 and 2014 almost 19 000 international hunters, mostly from the US, visited the eight African countries studied in the report, spending on average two weeks and $26 000. Most of that spending was in remote rural areas where people had limited economic opportunities, it said. By giving wildlife an economic value, the locals were encouraged to protect it, Eckert said.
That’s not an argument that sits well with animal rights organisations, which say hunting is too lightly controlled and in South Africa land owners are driven to breed animals with the biggest horns or unusual coat colours that do little for conservation.
‘I hope a single incident… doesn’t impact negatively a conservation mechanism.’
In the rest of Africa, it is mainly wild animals on government or community land that are hunted. Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia were included in the study along with South Africa, where trophy-hunting accounts for about 3 percent of the tourism industry.
“When you hunt it’s supposed to be selective, but trophy hunters tend to just want the biggest trophies,” said Isabel Wentzel, a spokeswoman for South Africa’s NSPCA.
Hunting groups are coming under pressure from animal rights activists to reform their practices after the slaying of Cecil, whose striking black mane was a popular tourist attraction, exposed the scale of Africa’s hunting industry.
Palmer was forced to temporarily close his dental practice in Minnesota as demonstrators and news crews congregated at the clinic.
After Cecil was killed, United and Delta joined a number of airlines including Emirates and Deutsche Lufthansa from stopping customers from transporting big-game hunting trophies as cargo. To import lion carcasses to the US, hunters must prove to the US Fish and Wildlife Service that hunting in the country of origin enhances populations.
“I hope that a single incident which was an international sensation driven by an emotional response doesn’t impact negatively a conservation mechanism of sustainable use,” Eckert said. – Bloomberg